Sometimes my friends would go out riding at night and to join them in these enterprises I needed to equip my bike with lights. Drawing on the extra money I had made by running errands by bicycle, I was able to buy a large lantern-like headlight to fix on to the front handlebars and a smaller, torpedoshaped red light for the rear. Both of these lights needed batteries, which proved expensive. By emptying my money boxes I just about managed to afford it all. I was now set up, come rain or shine, to cycle around in both the day and the night. I felt truly independent, travelling all by myself without the need for buses or cars.
Then I had a lucky break. A boy who lived in the same street whom I knew only slightly told me that he was giving up his job of delivering newspapers for Hepples, the newsagent. He had seen me cycling around and was prepared to recommend me to the newsagent if I wished. I was overjoyed at the prospect and immediately went along with him to see the man in charge. Mr Long, as the shopkeeper was called, said he would give me a week’s trial starting on Monday. Since it was now Thursday I arranged to meet up with my newfound friend early the next morning and do the delivery round with him to familiarize myself with the route. I was really excited at the prospect of having a regular job that would bring me some real pocket money. I was to be paid a shilling a day and half a crown (two shillings and sixpence) for Saturday and Sunday. My new bike had brought me good luck and prosperity as well as happiness.
My life now became much busier and so I did not welcome my father’s demand that I should look after my sisters all day Saturday whilst he and my mother attended the horse races at Gosforth Park. I don’t know where I summoned the courage from but I flatly refused to do it to his face. He became apoplectic. His face turned very red and I knew that in the next few moments he would start beating me until I agreed. I ran from the room, stopped to collect my bike and sped off.
I went to Mr Bramer’s farm because I knew my father would never trace me there. The farmer and his wife seemed really pleased to see me although there was an air of sadness about the two of them that day.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
They told me that their daughter, who served with the Army as a typist and secretary, had been killed earlier in the year when a doodlebug, the nickname for Hitler’s flying rocket bombs, had smashed into the government facility where she worked and exploded, killing everyone there. This coming weekend would have been a family celebration of her birthday. I sat with them in the big, old-fashioned kitchen as Mrs Bramer showed me photographs of their daughter, Jenny, when she was a child. Mrs Bramer softly cried as she passed around the photographs. After a while I made to leave but they would have nothing of it and insisted that I stay. I gathered that they needed someone young there to banish the haunting images of their daughter.
They asked me about my home and for a while I resisted telling them anything but in that emotionally charged atmosphere it eventually all tumbled out. They were angry at what had happened to me and at the behaviour of my father. Then, on a sudden impulse, Mrs Bramer said I could stay the night there and that I’d be doing them a favour to cheer them up. It was such a relief to be with such warm-hearted people that I didn’t hesitate for a moment and agreed to stay the night with them. Besides, I loved being close to their animals. I knew that my father would be searching for me but once he realized that I wasn’t at my grandmother’s house he would not know where else to look. At least for tonight I’d be safe from his fury. I knew that my mother wouldn’t worry too much as she would think I had gone to stay with one of my friends at Axwell Park, as I had done before.
The role of having to look after my sisters on Saturdays whilst my parents went to the dog racing at Gateshead or the horse racing at Hexham, Rothbury or Gosforth Park dated from when I was about nine or ten years old. My grandmother could not help because she worked on Saturdays and I think the old ladies who used to look after me had lost patience with babysitting so often for my parents. Since it was considered too dangerous to leave underage children alone in the house, we would be told to play in the street until their return. I would be threatened and bullied into taking responsibility for my sisters, including my sister, Gloria, who was young enough to still be in a pram. I’m not sure if my mother agreed to this practice, as I had often witnessed my father bullying her into attending functions with him.
I remember that several neighbours took exception to seeing three children – with two-year-old Gloria sometimes screaming her head off – having to wander aimlessly up and down the street in all kinds of weather. One Saturday someone called the police and they took us to a local home for children who had been orphaned in the bombing. Our parents were then arrested at the White City dog-racing track on Scotswood Road. My parents were severely cautioned and threatened with the Magistrate’s Court if the same thing happened again.
Despite this, my father had obviously decided that the time was ripe for him to get up to the same old trick again – perhaps he thought he could get away with it now I looked older. I always thought that his gambling was particularly despicable since he always kept my mother desperately short of cash for housekeeping. There was hardly ever enough food to feed the whole family. Food rationing was still in force and it was only through my grandmother being on such good terms with the butcher (they had gone to school together) that we sometimes had enough meat to feed us all. At meal times my father, as the working man of the house, always had to have the lion’s share of the meat or suet pudding. Once, I remember watching him struggling so hard to swallow such huge portions of food that his eyes bulged just like a bloated frog.
I spent a most pleasant time at the farm. We had fresh ham, potatoes and garden peas, all produce of the farm. I ate until I couldn’t eat any more. For dessert there were strawberries and clotted cream. There were no food restrictions here, only an abundance of healthy food provided by the sweat and toil of the farmer and his workers. We played dominoes on the gnarled oak table that dominated the vast kitchen, and were kept warm and cosy by the coke-burning Aga cooker. At bedtime I was shown up to a small attic bedroom at the top of the old farmhouse and given one of Mr Bramer’s shirts to wear in bed. Crisp, white linen sheets enfolded me and I didn’t wake until I heard the cockerel saluting the new morning. A huge symphony of birdsong joined the dawn chorus that soon stretched from one woodland to another. At its height it was a blast of sound, like massed choirs, receding to a melodic hymn to the daylight as the birds set about the serious business of finding food and feeding their young.
I was treated to a breakfast of bacon, two eggs, black and white pudding and homemade bread that had been fried in goose fat until crispy and then richly buttered. All this was washed down with steaming mugs of honey-sweetened hot tea stirred with fresh Jersey cream. It was beyond the dreams of a hungry young boy accustomed to wartime food shortages. I could hardly walk after such a delicious breakfast but helped out as much as I could by doing odd jobs around the farm. I fed the hens, took hay to Benny, the huge shire horse I’d first met in the hayfield, and mucked out his horse box.
I spent some time in the barn, letting my eyes become used to the gloom after the bright sun outside. After a while I could just make out the location of the swallow’s nests, chiefly by watching the parent birds flying in with fresh batches of food. Judging from the size of the nestlings, I knew they would soon be leaving the nest. As they stared down at me from the edge of the nest, they looked so comically endearing that I couldn’t help but laugh. The owls didn’t make their presence known but I reckoned that they were probably in the darkest part of the barn waiting for rodents to appear below them.
I enjoyed helping out and seeing to the needs of the animals, and in the afternoon I joined Mr Bramer. He left most of the heavy work on the farm to George and Matthew, two farmhands who lived with their families in tied cottages on the site. Instead, he roamed the farm complex attending to all the minor things that needed fixing. He welcomed my company, and I was glad to keep him from dwelling too much on the
death of his daughter.
Mr Bramer kept up a rambling commentary as we meandered through the farm enclosures.
‘That’s where a goshawk took my cockerel and virtually wiped out my poultry one year and yonder is where a pine marten broke into a shed and killed half a dozen geese I was keeping for the Christmas Market one year.’
Then, as if he’d had a sudden thought that was irresistible, he led me off the beaten track to a heavily barricaded compound.
‘Come and meet Mogolan,’ he said.
He opened a door to a corridor that led up to a gate with an iron-barred window.
‘Take a look through there,’ he said, smiling.
At first I couldn’t see anything and then a massive, light-coloured form moved and a colossal head turned towards me.
‘It beats me how those Spanish fellows – what do you call ’em? – can face one of those and take it on.’
His words broke my trance as I stared at the most terrifying animal I had ever seen. It was a giant bull bristling with latent power and full of incipient fury and aggression. I stared at Mogolan in petrified silence and the bull, through cold, hostile, pebble eyes rimmed with red, stared back at me.
‘Would he hurt you?’ I asked naively.
‘He would kill me without a moment’s notice and he’d relish doing it.’ I shivered despite the warmth in the air. ‘But he wasn’t always like that. You see that bull there, he’s a prize animal, worth thousands of pounds, but all he can put his mind to just now is blind lust, how to get to and mate with the cows he knows are somewhere around here. He can scent them and anything and everything that gets in his way, stopping him from doing that, must be smashed.’
Mr Bramer went on to tell me about a cold windy night in March two years earlier when his best cow gave birth in the early morning to Mogolan, a robust, cream-coloured little bull. He was everything the Bramers had hoped for and he had the sweetest temperament of any animal they had ever known.
‘He followed us round like a dog,’ said Mr Bramer. ‘If I whistled and called for him he’d come running and he would allow us to pet and fondle him as much as we wanted and he took treats from our hands.’
‘So what changed things?’ I asked.
‘Sex. That’s what changed him. He got full of testosterone, that’s the male hormone that drives male animals to mate with the females but in horned beasts it brings on what is called the “Rutting Madness”. That’s what changed him. Anything and anybody that isn’t a female in receptive heat is a mortal enemy. I had hoped that there’d still be something left of the affection we had for each other but there’s nothing there now. One day earlier this year I went into his pen to give him a rub down and he charged me, put me down and kept butting my chest. Somehow I managed to roll out from under him and George came in just then and fended him off me until I could climb out the pen. He’d have killed me for sure, there and then.’
Mr Bramer laid a fatherly hand on my shoulder and warned me, ‘Never get between a cow and her calf and never get near a bull in rut and that goes for stags as well. Sometimes even a ewe with lambs will attack you and a full grown ram is always dangerous.’
Such were the lessons I learned in an afternoon from this unassuming, kindly man. The experience with Mogolan made me think that there were animals in the world that, despite every effort, would not be responsive to love and caring.
The Bramers prevailed upon me to stay a further night, an invitation that I was more than happy to accept.
‘Has he been filling you with farm talk to frighten you?’ Mrs Bramer asked as we sat down to dinner.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’ve learned more in an afternoon than in six months at school.’
‘Well, I never did hold much value on schooling,’ she said. ‘My mother taught me to read and the rest that’s worth knowing I’ve learned right here.’
We spent another carefree, pleasant evening together and in the morning, after another perfect night’s sleep, I prepared to return home. First, I decided, I would check what my grandmother was doing. As I was about to leave Mr Bramer brought out a bag filled with food.
‘Just a little something from the missus and me to feed a growing lad and make him strong,’ he said. ‘Come back and stay with us again soon.’
I promised that I would. I hugged them both in turn and then cycled away with the heavy bag swinging from the handlebars.
My grandmother wasn’t in when I got to her place but I was able to get inside by putting my hand through the letterbox and grabbing the key hanging from a string behind the door. She was amazed when she came in to see the food I had set out on the table. Mr and Mrs Bramer had given me a dozen eggs, a large ham, some sausages and a plucked chicken. I told her all about the people at the farm and how kind they were and that I had stayed there the last two nights. My grandmother was overwhelmed by their largesse and said that they must be exceptional people. She then stored away the food, saying that she’d take some up to my mother the following day.
She told me the news I had been waiting to hear: my father had rampaged around looking for me and threatening blue murder. My grandmother said that she would speak to my mother about leaving the children alone while to they went out gambling.
‘It’s not right,’ she said with a stern face. ‘It’s not seemly.’
I told her that I would be back later and cycled to the lake at Axwell Park. I had hoped to meet up with some of my friends but, as none of them was there, I simply rode up to the far corner of a field to think through my present troubles. Sitting under a tree by the lake, my heart was soon filled with calmness as I began to tune in to the harmony surrounding me. I could hear a great spotted woodpecker hammering the bark of a silver birch to uncover insects and a pair of red squirrels was chittering away in the higher branches of a horse chestnut. There were no alarms or cries of fear. Nothing alerted anything else to the possibility of danger because, in this little pocket of time, there was none. This small enclave seemed to be clothed in a spell of profound peace. It would not last forever but whilst it did, it offered a kind of medicine to those willing to embrace it. I closed my eyes and felt renewed. I would be able deal with whatever was coming my way once I had returned home.
I cycled homewards intending to spend as little time as possible there. The family were just sitting down to supper and my mother ushered me to my place at the table.
My father glared across the table at me and demanded, ‘And where do you think you have been?’
‘I’ve been staying with my friends,’ I replied not meeting his gaze.
He started to say something else but my mother called for hush at the table.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he said.
He didn’t get the chance. As soon as I had finished eating I said, ‘Bye, Mum,’ and left the kitchen while he was still struggling to rise from his seat. I grabbed my bike and rode down to my grandmother’s house with a light heart as the evening sunshine projected the shadow of me and the bike, prancing ahead of me. I stayed the night at my grandmother’s house and next morning I cycled down to the River Derwent at Swalwell. I was determined to make the most of the remaining time of the school summer holidays.
I slowed up my cycle ride to take in the colours of the late summer as it drifted into autumn, my favourite time of the year. The low morning sun caught the mist on the river and shone through the reeds lining the river bank, lighting a red fire behind them. Filled with the uncompromising possessiveness of early adolescence, I thought such scenes were mine alone to keep and savour. If others came to disturb the solitude of these moments, I would slide away unseen – like the partridge and the doe, I knew how to hide.
I felt myself maturing, shedding some of the childhood nature of waiting, powerless, for things to happen. I had become a little more assured now that my life had started moving in the direction I desired. Sometimes I found it enormously difficult to stop thinking about the river, the lake and the woods, and would leave images of them secretl
y couched at the back of my mind even while doing something else. Other things now needed my attention as much as possible, as I began in earnest to concentrate on my grammar-school career.
THE FINAL BEATING
Dressed smartly, with a resplendent school badge adorning the new blazer my mother had bought for me, I felt the impending weight of my initiation into the new chapter of my life. It was my first day at Blaydon Grammar School, but strangely it was to bring the ghosts of the past to face me yet again. My first class was interrupted by a message from the school secretary that the headmaster, Mr Locket, wished to see Denis O’Connor. My mind swiftly moved from a happy-go-lucky mode into an anxiety state because, in my previous school, to be sent for by the headmaster meant trouble and usually punishment. And so it was with mounting trepidation that I approached Mr Locket’s door and nervously knocked.
‘Come in,’ a voice barked from within the sanctum.
I entered a large office, which smelt of leather and was lined with books all around the walls. Before me stood Mr J. Locket swathed in a black academic gown. I was overwhelmed. He coughed twice to clear his throat and to indicate the serious nature of what he was about to say.
‘Well, O’Connor – Denis O’Connor – I hope that you will make the most of your time here with us.’ This was followed by another two coughs. ‘But I need to tell you, in fact to warn you, that your Uncle Dan was a pupil here and although he did very well he caused a great deal of trouble for me and the other teachers by his difficult behaviour.’
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