by Will Birch
By the age of three, Ian could read many two-syllable words and simple stories. His vocabulary grew, and he became quite talkative. ‘The story went that Ian picked up a nursery rhyme book and began to fit words to a rhyme he knew,’ says Molly Walker. ‘He said, “I can read, mum.” He knew that the words fitted into the tune, he was quite bright in that way.’ Mother and son also kept scrapbooks, and Ian could often be found sitting in a sea of tiny paper clippings. An assortment of pencils and crayons was never far from reach, and his imagination was fired at every turn.
Shortly after the war ended, Peggy decided that she and Ian should leave Cornwall so she could resume her career as a health visitor and accepted an offer to stay with her sister Elisabeth, who now lived in a cottage at 90 Front Lane, Cranham, near Upminster in Essex. Foster-children Richard and Jill had been returned to their mother, leaving Elisabeth, Peggy and Ian living at the cottage. Like Peggy, Elisabeth also loved children, but she had never married. She’d long ago decided that, if she was childless by the age of forty, she would try to adopt. Although Elisabeth was single, adoption was straightforward, as the war had left thousands of fatherless children whose widowed mothers were unable to cope. In 1946, Elisabeth adopted a baby boy named Martin, who would one day provide company for Ian. A few years later, Elisabeth would also adopt a baby girl, Lucy Catherine.
By the summer of 1947, Ian was nearing school age. For someone who had been heavily doted upon for five years, he was always going to find formal education a wrench. Compared to the security and warmth of home, where he received tuition from his mum, the daily trudge to Upminster Infants School was too grim for Ian to even contemplate. Confident of his reading ability, Ian questioned why he should go to school – what was the point if mum was providing all the education he would ever need?
December’s severe weather with its heavy snowdrifts and icy pavements provided Ian with the perfect excuse for a spot of truancy. He was starting to taste the joy of rebellion, wondering how far he could push the boundaries. English law required all children over the age of five to attend school, but the wily Ian contrived ways to buck the system, including feigning illness and, his favourite trick, simply removing all of his clothes in the middle of the room and throwing a tantrum. Despite threats of a visit from the dreaded School Board man, Ian became a serial malingerer. ‘I was taken to the head-shrinkers because I refused to go to school,’ Ian told me. ‘They said I was disturbed because my parents had split up. Some quite loud arguments used to take place between them, but I could read before I went to school. I suppose you could say I was semi-precocious.’
Ian’s education was not much affected by prolonged absences, but he wasn’t a complete homebody. He also enjoyed typical children’s pursuits and would often play outside with Barry Anderson, whose family owned the Plough public house nearby. ‘We were about five,’ recalls Barry. ‘The pub had a long corridor, and I remember seeing this little boy watching me from the doorway. It was Ian. He lived up the road and we became close friends.’ In the summer of 1948, Barry was invited to join Ian and Peggy on a trip to Cornwall, where they would stay with Ian’s grandmother. As ‘best mates’, this was the first of many holidays or day trips Ian and Barry would enjoy together. ‘Ian used to read me stories,’ says Barry. ‘The books were a little beyond my understanding, but Ian could read them in a way that he made me understand. These were books about history or politics. He’d pick one out and say, “Would you like to hear about George Washington?” Even before that he was reading me Rupert the Bear. His mother got him the books. He had Rupert the Bear everywhere. She put this into him.’
While Ian was wriggling out of school, Bill’s career was gaining momentum. In 1945 he had seen a newspaper advertisement, placed by Rolls-Royce, offering advanced driving courses for trainee chauffeurs. He quickly imagined himself behind the wheel of a prestigious motor car, rubbing shoulders and exchanging conversation with some distinguished client, perhaps a politician or a film star. Upon joining Rolls-Royce he quickly rose to the position of chauffeur for the company chairman, Lord Hives. He was also hired out by the famous motor company to drive businessmen all over England and occasionally across Europe. When his work took him to Switzerland, he arranged for his family to join him, perhaps hoping for a reconciliation with Peggy. The Swiss trip of 1948 provided Ian with a typically amusing story in later life. Reminiscing in his Hampstead work den, he told me, ‘I lived in Switzerland once, when I was six, for six months. My dad had a job driving a rubber millionaire called Ellerman. My mum said he got the sack for cavorting with the geezer’s missus . . . could have done, my dad was a bit of a chap. I’ve never been able to get this quite right, but we lived in a little village of chalets called Les Avants, near Montreux. In 1958 Noël Coward, as a tax exile, went to live in the same place, and I think it was the same house, called the Villa Christian. I was there ten years before Noël Coward! He probably found some of my notes! . . . and knocked out a couple of musicals on the strength of it, the old bastard!’
Ian returned from Switzerland with a musical box for Barry and a longing to see more of his dad, but his parents were unable to square their incompatibility and chose to permanently live apart. Ian may have assumed as a child that his father had deserted him, but it was his mother who had chosen not to return to the family home in Harrow at the end of the war, preferring to move in with her sister in Cranham. Bill returned to central London and in between trips to Europe, rented rooms at 82 Ebury Street, Victoria. The accommodation was shared with a ‘lady friend’, disparagingly referred to by the rest of the family as ‘Lulu’.
Despite their break-up, Peggy and Bill would never divorce, and Ian continued to benefit greatly from their individual attentions, especially when Bill turned up to take Ian and his friends out in the Rolls-Royce. The usual meeting place was the car park of the Plough. Ian glowed with pride when Bill arrived and people poured out of the pub to admire the gleaming automobile. Ian was beginning to feel he was in some way special, different perhaps from other children, most of who were unaccustomed to fancy cars or the simple pleasures of being tutored by mum. At the age of seven, he was Upminster’s very own ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’. He had a doting mother who fed his imagination; two aunties who provided him with additional attention and a dad who drove aristocrats around in a Rolls-Royce. To top it all, he only went to school when he felt like it. What more could he want? He may have wished for a few more friends, but he was also quite content with his own company; Peggy had seen to that. In the spring of 1949, Ian Dury was king of the hill, but his life was about to take a dramatic turn.
2
Cruel Summer
Southend-on-Sea, 1949. August was one of the hottest months on record, with temperatures in the south of England frequently hitting the high eighties. In the midst of the heat wave, seven-year-old Ian and his friend Barry Anderson took a day trip to the seaside, accompanied by Barry’s mum. They had been to Southend before, in the Rolls-Royce with Bill, but today they would travel by rail and visit the open-air pool on the Western Esplanade, situated close to the town’s pleasure pier, renowned as ‘the longest in the world’.
Westcliff swimming baths, built in 1915 high above the beach, had a raised viewing area around its perimeter and tiny changing cubicles that opened onto a blue-tiled pool full of mildly chlorinated water. Overhanging the deep end were some diving boards and a water-slide, into the surface of which -according to local folklore – a young tearaway had secretly inserted a razor blade in the misguided belief that it would cut through and completely remove one or two of the young girls’ swimming costumes. This may have been some juvenile fantasy, but in truth a far greater danger lurked at the pool – the deadly poliomyelitis virus.
Oblivious to the invisible menace, Ian and Barry splashed about in the shallow end for an hour. Full of excitement, Ian accidentally took a gulp of the icy water. Its harsh saltiness stung the back of his throat and made him want to vomit. He spat out as much of it as he could
, but in that split second his life was changed for ever. Within hours, the poliovirus was quietly raging through his otherwise healthy body.
Ian went home happy that evening. It had been an enjoyable day, and he could now look forward to a holiday at Penmellyn with Aunt Molly and his grandmother. Molly recalls, ‘Peggy knew I was going away for a fortnight’s holiday in Mevagissey, and asked if I could take Ian because she only had a short holiday herself and Ian had the whole school holiday. She asked, “What is he going to do with himself?” I agreed to take Ian, and we set off for Cornwall. The only thing I remember about the journey was that I asked him to go and have a wash before we ate. He said, “I don’t need a wash.” My mother had moved from our old house at the end of the village after my father died. Because she didn’t have room for all the furniture we had, she got a big barn. We used it as a sleeping place. Ian and I slept out there on this particular occasion, and I remember reading a chapter or two to him at bedtime, and the next night he told me he’d finished the book. Then he had an awful headache.’
Ian’s grandmother immediately sent for the doctor, who tapped Ian’s knees to test his reflexes, but the reaction was worryingly poor. The doctor concealed his fears, but when he returned later that afternoon, he matter-of-factly announced: ‘I’m afraid it’s polio.’ An ambulance was called, and Ian was rushed to Truro hospital, accompanied by Molly, who had telephoned her sister and suggested she should get the night train. ‘My mum came down on the milk train, and they told her I was going to die,’ recalled Ian. ‘I was very ill. We were in Nissen huts. She wasn’t allowed in, but she could see me from outside and she said my face was the same colour as the sheet. The idea had been that I was going to go to some sort of school where children who were a bit precocious went, to be together. I was fucking glad I didn’t go there, but I got polio instead, as a sort of alternative route.’
Poliomyelitis is an infectious viral disease that attacks the central nervous system. The highly contagious virus is easily transmitted between humans or by the ingestion of contaminated water, particularly in warmer weather. In a small percentage of cases, it leads to muscle weakness and the destruction of nerve cells. This can result in the asymmetrical paralysis of limbs, in Ian’s case his left arm and leg. The world had seen a number of polio outbreaks in recent years. On the other side of the Atlantic, the epidemic of 1949 had claimed over 40,000, with some 2,720 deaths. At the University of Pittsburgh, Doctor Jonas Salk, a thirty-five-year-old virologist, was taking an obsessive interest in the poliovirus, hoping to create a preventative. Salk’s famous ‘killed-virus’ vaccine would arrive in 1954, sadly too late to immunize sufferers such as Ian.
About his life-altering experience, Ian told me, ‘When my mum died I went through her papers and found some correspondence between the medical officer at Southend and her. There were nine cases [of polio] reported in August, during the heatwave. I got a heavy-duty fever and I had to have a lumbar puncture, for fluid on the spine. I spent six weeks in an isolation hospital in Truro, because I was infectious. My dad sent me a postcard every day, and my mum gave me a toy farm animal every day. I had a farm on my bedside locker with a mirror for the duck pond, a bit of fencing, a cow . . . I was encased in plaster – both arms and both legs. I rallied round after six weeks in the Royal Cornish Infirmary.’
During the time that Ian was in Truro, encased in plaster, Peggy was in constant touch with the health authorities, urging them to allow her son to be moved to a hospital nearer home. At one point the doctor at Truro wrote to Peggy stating that, although he couldn’t legally prevent Ian leaving Truro, such a move would be ill-advised. Quite simply, Ian was not expected to live, but he miraculously pulled through. ‘When I left the isolation unit my farm animals had to stay there,’ said Ian. ‘I was choked. They took me back to Essex on a stretcher, to Black Notley Hospital near Braintree.’
Ian’s friend Barry Anderson had a close call. His family worried that he too may have caught the poliovirus and kept him in bed with regular visits from the doctor, but Barry wasn’t told about Ian. ‘I kept asking, “Where’s Ian?”’ says Barry. ‘I didn’t see him for six months, but when he was in hospital in Braintree I went with his mother to visit him every few weeks. We’d be in tears from laughter, joking about, but I didn’t really understand what was wrong with him.’ Ian spent eighteen painful months in Black Notley Hospital, by which time he was nearly nine years old. The polio epidemic – cruelly arbitrary in its choice of victims – had stolen two years of Ian’s childhood and designated him for a lifetime of physical discomfort. Although Ian put on a brave face, the early years would hit him hard. He became understandably bitter and physically off-balance, the loss of equilibrium making him irritable and stroppy, but his disability would render him effectively immune from physical retaliation if he chose to lash out with his tongue. Thus, polio was to become the major factor in Ian’s existence and greatly influence his thoughts, words and deeds.
It had been a devastating blow for Peggy, whose dreams of Ian passing his exams and becoming a doctor or lawyer seemed to be dashed. She’d now been separated from Bill for three years. While Ian was in hospital, she and Elisabeth moved from the cottage in Cranham to a large corner house at 12 Waldegrave Gardens, Upminster. From there, the tireless Walker sisters would plan Ian’s rehabilitation.
When Ian emerged from hospital in the spring of 1951, his left leg was supported by a steel and leather calliper. The left side of his body was now slight, his arm thin, his hand twisted and small. By contrast, the right-hand-side of his body displayed no abnormalities, and was quite strong. Physiotherapy sessions in hospital ensured that he would have the strength to move around virtually unaided, but would require a wheelchair for trickier journeys. Peggy turned to her younger sister for advice. Molly was now working in education and suggested placing Ian in a special school that would cater for his needs. She knew of one such establishment in East Sussex, where disabled children were given occupational therapy by learning a trade such as book-binding, carpentry or shoe-repairing. Peggy had envisioned none of these occupations for Ian, but, given his condition, it seemed a better option than returning to school in Upminster. She nodded her agreement, and Molly quietly made the arrangements.
In April 1951, one month before his ninth birthday, Ian started at Chailey Heritage Craft School, a former workhouse that would become his home for the next three years. Chailey was founded in 1903 by Dame Grace Kimmins, a pioneer of education for disabled children suffering from diseases such as rickets, tuberculosis and malnutrition. In 1894, Dame Grace had established the wonderfully named ‘Guild of the Poor Brave Things’ to help disabled boys become productive in society, but she could not possibly have foreseen the coming maelstrom that was Ian Dury. He had no intention of becoming a street-corner cobbler and proceeded to hang tough. What were his choices, after all – to be a nice, polite boy from a posh family and risk a kicking or to become a leader of gangs?
In the grim, Dickensian atmosphere of the Craft School, Ian had no option but to fight. Combat would take place in various positions depending on impromptu ‘rules’ that took account of his adversary’s disabilities. If his opponent was severely disabled, with two callipers, fighting would take place on the ground. If he had only one calliper, they would fight seated on a bench. Those who were calliper-free could brawl standing up. ‘I don’t remember fighting with an ordinary person,’ Ian would tell BBC Radio 4’s Frances Donnelly thirty years later. ‘I mean by that, having two arms. There weren’t many of those there. I would start a fight sitting next to somebody. They’d have to sit on my left-hand-side ’cos my right arm wouldn’t give him no digs if he was sitting on my right-hand-side, I couldn’t get near him. We’d usually end up on the floor, I’d use my right leg as well, do a bit of kicking.’
Ian would also recall his experiences in an aborted autobiography. ‘He wrote a chapter about Chailey,’ recalls future manager Andrew King. ‘It was the funniest, blackest thing I’ve ever read. It w
as called “The Night We Hung Charlie Young”. They just about killed this guy and you’re pissing yourself with laughter. They were drowning him in the lavatory hanging him upside down from the cistern by his legs, with his head in the pan. It was just terrifying.’
Many of the Chailey inmates were in a far worse state of health than Ian, with either physical or mental afflictions. Some had no lower limbs and were wheelchair-bound. Others had breathing difficulties and were confined to an iron lung, a mechanical device designed to assist sufferers of respiratory paralysis. One such pupil who experienced the iron lung was Paul Bura, who, when he met Ian later in life, joked: ‘You’re not the bastard who used to beat me up, are you?’ To which, Ian replied, ‘No I’m fucking well not!’ and limped off in a huff. Bura later wrote a poem about the hardships of Chailey, which caused Ian to comment: ‘This geezer tells it the way it was.’ The two worst aspects of Chailey for Bura, and of course Ian, were missing their parents and being bullied or beaten up. Some children were less susceptible to bullying than others, but the harsh regime taught Ian not to take things ‘lying down’. Molly Walker confesses, ‘I thought it was a clever idea for Ian to go to Chailey, but they were too fierce there altogether. Ian used to say that if you fell down you had to get up. There was no running to help you. You were left to struggle. It was carried too far, I think.’