Mr Locket coughed yet again and this time I could smell the odour of cigarettes coming from him. I was beginning to wonder what on earth my Uncle Dan had done, and what this had to do with me on my first day at grammar school.
Mr Locket drew himself up, coughed once more, and with a slightly embarrassed tone to his voice said, ‘And so I want to warn you that I won’t stand for any nonsense or there’ll be trouble.’
His words seemed to hang in the air as if awaiting some kind of confirmation. When he sat down behind his desk, finally I realized that he had finished and was waiting for me to go. I turned and left the room in an utterly bemused state of mind and returned to my class. I felt that I had been accorded the status of a rebel-in-waiting, but only the future would tell if this label had any substance.
Later during my time at grammar school I looked upon this incident as not only amusing but as prophetic. I believe that, eventually, there was a basic level of respect, touched with affection, in the relationship between us, but on many occasions Mr Locket would become exasperated and sometimes downright dumbfounded at the kind of things that I got up to during my time under his care. There were quite a few incidents that must have caused him headaches and frustration.
I remember that when I was in the fourth form I announced that I no longer wished to play football or rugby, as they had no appeal for me, and that I preferred to play cricket, which I had enjoyed playing throughout the summer with my new friends in Axwell Park. I remember seeing Mr Locket charging down to the cricket nets where a few friends and I were spending the games period. Looking straight at me, as he had rightly assumed that I was the ring leader in this plan of action, he informed us that we must cooperate with the games master and play other ball games. I politely informed him – having just become acquainted with Plato’s commentaries on Socrates – that my decision was final and not open to negotiation because it was based on reason rather than momentary impulse. After a heated exchange he withdrew and left us alone.
The games master also remonstrated with us but I remained adamant and eventually he capitulated when all five of us declared that we were practising so that we could at some later time play for England. The farcical arrogance of this statement left him flabbergasted. But the really crazy aspect of this incident was that at the time, inspired by the radio commentaries on the Ashes series between England and Australia, we really believed what we said. It was a case of adolescence at its worst and I believe that the headmaster and the sports teacher decided to just let it work itself out. We reached a compromise which I believed was a truly democratic outcome. During games periods we would practise batting and bowling at the nets, but when the weather was inclement then we would practise the other cricketing skills: slip-catching, fielding, running wearing leg pads, repairing equipment and so on. There were other times when my many misdemeanours were shrugged off by the headmaster, who turned out to be a truly understanding educationist who was at heart a benign supporter of youthful development.
Since I had started grammar school, life at home had taken on a new routine in which I spent less time face-to-face with my father. There was a great deal of homework to be tackled each night and even more at weekends. To begin with, I also spent time walking and training Bruno, so I found myself very busy indeed. Then there was the extra time I liked to spend at my grandmother’s house where I did supplementary reading of the classics from my Uncle John’s library.
Grammar-school life also created a new cultural dimension for me because it was a co-educational school. With the opposite sex around all the time, I had a new raft of interests and concerns. There were frequent parties to attend as well as school dances, which were designed to broaden the scope of the educational experience. Inevitably there were pairings off and, when I turned fourteen, I found a soulmate in Nancy. She lived with her parents and a younger sister in a well-to-do part of Dunston, a former village which had become a suburb of Gateshead. When lessons were over we tended to spend time in the school library doing some of our homework. As we became better acquainted we sometimes met up to go for walks together and one weekend we went to a late showing at the Plaza Cinema. As we emerged from the cinema I was hailed in friendly fashion by a workmate of my father. I didn’t think much of the incident at the time nor of the dire consequences I would have to face because of it.
On the following Monday evening I was working at my school books on the table in the small sitting-room adjoining the kitchen when my father came home from work. I heard him tersely ask my mother if I was in and then he charged into the sitting-room. He smelled of sawdust and wood resin, and he was still dressed in his work overalls. His face was already swollen red with aggression when he confronted me.
‘Is it true?’ his voice blasted at me. ‘Are you courting a girl from that Protestant dump of a school you are at?’
I stood up quaking at his manner and replied that I had gone to the pictures with a girlfriend from my class but that I wouldn’t call it courting. It was simply a normal friendship, and lots of my friends in the class did the same.
He slammed the back of his hand into my face with such force that it broke my nose and lacerated my cheek and lips as his ring cut into my skin. I fell to my knees as he rained blows to my head, which made me reel about the floor as stars really did flash before my eyes and a zinging started in my ears. Next he began kicking me with his heavy workboots and I began retching. I suddenly believed that he intended to beat me to death. I felt a terrible pain in my ribs as he continued the onslaught. He kept on shouting during the attack, calling me ‘a Godless damned whelp who should never have been born’. But it was his eyes that I remember most. As I looked up at him through the blood running down my cheeks I saw the eyes of a maniac who believed that I was beyond the redemption and mercy of his all-powerful God.
All at once there was a tigress standing over me as my mother positioned herself between my father and me. She screamed and shrieked at him like she was possessed with a fiendish spitting fury and he stopped kicking me, surprised by the venom in her voice and the look in her eyes. Lying on the floor with blood still streaming down my face, I half raised myself up and watched him as he slunk away. I swear that I could perceive wisps of sinister black vapour coiling around the lower parts of his body – perhaps it was the resin impregnated in his clothes turning into steam with the heat of his exertions. Then I passed out.
When I awoke I was being bandaged by friendly old Dr Morrison, whom I heard explaining to my mother that such episodes were best kept within the family and it would be preferential if the boy could spend some time with a relative until most of the healing was done.
‘Meanwhile,’ he said, ‘I will have a word with your husband.’
He would also sign a sick note to cover my absence from school since it was best that I rest up for a while. He would call on me again when he knew where I was residing.
And so I was taken once more to the loving home of my grandmother. I could barely walk because of the bruising to my legs and ribs, so moving me from my parent’s house proved something of a problem. In the end, my mother and grandmother managed to arrange me sitting sideways in a Silver Cross pram, which had been used for my sisters when they were babies, with my legs hanging over the side. It was lucky that I was small and slight for my age. After dark, so that the neighbours wouldn’t see, I was then wheeled to my grandmother’s house.
My grandmother was enraged about the extent of the battering my father had given me and wanted to call in the police. After due consideration and counselling from the local Justice of the Peace, it was decided not to proceed on this course because if my father was imprisoned the family would have no income. Such was the state of affairs in 1948, when the country was still in a severely impoverished state following the Second World War. My mother called in at church and told the new parish priest, Father Kennedy, who simply reminded her that her duty in marriage was to be a good wife to her husband. As for me, the priest said that parents had an
obligation to guide their children away from the temptations of sin. When I heard this I had a fearful feeling that my father could do whatever he liked to me and I was powerless to escape his temper. However, the priest did talk to my father about his behaviour.
I wrote to Nancy giving her only the briefest details of my ‘accident’ and asking her to save her lesson notes for me to copy when I got back to school. The following weekend, on the Saturday morning, Nancy came to my grandmother’s house asking if she could see me. When she was shown in and saw me lying on the sofa, still covered with bruises and bandages, she began to cry. We had tea and my grandmother’s cupcakes and she promised to call back the following week to share her notes with me. I asked her not to say anything to anybody but the news of my condition was soon circulating throughout the school. I first became aware of this when I began receiving a number of sympathy cards.
Nancy was sent for by a senior female teacher and asked in confidence what precisely had happened to me. The teacher then told Mr Locket who in turn questioned Dr Morrison, who also happened to be the school doctor. To my great surprise, Mr Locket visited my grandmother’s house and expressed great concern for my condition, saying that, as I was a pupil at his school, he had an official responsibility to look after my care. He told me that I would be welcome back at school as soon as I could walk and that every effort would be made to keep me up to date with my studies. He then insisted on going to see my father back at home.
In the days following I was able to cobble together the gist of this meeting. Mr Locket was already well aware of my father’s violent family background as some of the O’Connor brothers had a reputation for getting involved in fights with other men in the town. Mr Locket threatened to have me taken into fostering care under the auspices of Durham Education Authority, which would consider very seriously a recommendation from the school. After talking to my grandmother, Mr Locket decided not to initiate this course at the present juncture but he let my father know that he would not hesitate to proceed if circumstances warranted it in the future. I felt uplifted to receive such support and soon began to feel better because of it. It was good to know that others were aware of the way I was treated and were prepared to do something about it.
Soon I was able to return to school and was well received by my classmates. My studies picked up at pace and in the end of term examinations I came top of the class in Maths and was awarded the prize of 7 shillings and 6 pence in National Savings Stamps. My mother and grandmother were over the moon at my success but my father simply growled that ‘the rest of the class can’t be up to much then’.
As it turned out, he never beat me again although I always sensed his hatred for me whenever I was near him.
Sometimes I found the reality of my father’s hatred too much to bear emotionally. Even if I wasn’t his child then surely the fault lay elsewhere. It made no sense to me at all and I found myself at times still struggling against all the odds to win some approval, if not affection, from him. But it never worked. Life can be cruel but to be hated for who you are rather than what you have done is enough to cripple the spirit of any person. He hated me for the rest of his life, but it was particularly damaging during my childhood years.
His inclinations to attack me physically may have been mollified somewhat by the counselling of the good Dr Morrison and the parish priest, not to mention the warning from Mr Locket, but his treatment of me did not improve. In place of his fist, his interactions with me now were filled with toxic mockery, both in front of members of my family or when strangers were present. When people appeared to be amused by his comments, particularly if anyone sniggered or laughed aloud, he would smile broadly as if he had scored an important point. He helped divide people’s opinions of me: some people assumed that I was worthy of his contempt and shared it without questioning the reasons that lay behind it, while others saw that it was wrong. Inevitably, there was friction with those he turned against me – which included my sisters, family members and other people whom I had previously regarded as friendly. As a result, I tended to withdraw into the persona of a hard-working student with little or no interest in what was going on at home.
In fact, I had another secret outlet for my interests and imagination that my father could not sully. During the war, after he had been called up to serve in the Navy, my mother took a job as a cashier at the Pavilion Cinema. As my mother worked there I could get in free, with the approval of the manager, to see any film I wanted. I had a keen interest in all things to do with film so I soon befriended the operators of the massive machines in the projection room. They let me help out and showed me how to rewind the huge reels of film and how to repair them if the film snapped. After the war ended my mother continued to work in the cinema for a while, despite the protests of my father. The appeal of the extra money and newly gained sense of independence was irresistible for her. During her time there I continued to have access, as soon as my homework was done, to most of the major films of the 1940s and early 1950s. I would sit there and just lose myself in another world, free from the taunts and jibes of my father.
ATTACK AT THE STABLES
I have always loved horses or, more exactly, I have always loved the idea of horses. From my earliest sight of a cowboy riding a horse in the Saturday morning cinema shows for children I have been obsessed with horses and longed for the day when I might be able to ride one. In conversation with some of my classmates I learned about a riding school called High Meadows, which was situated near the hospital where I had been taken after the death of my dog Monty. I was told that the owners of the riding school welcomed youngsters to help muck out the stables and assist in the general grooming of the horses. This was where I first met Wildfire, a seven-year-old mare, sometime later. She was a horse of many colours, whose kind the cowboys always referred to as a ‘pinto’ or paint horse, which was favoured by Native Americans, especially the Comanche tribe. She had a dark brown face, a white neck and mane, and was covered in large brown, white and black patches over the rest of her body. Her true equine description is that she was a ‘skewbald’, which is similar to a piebald, but they only have black and white colouring. She was a fine-looking horse and later was to play a significant part in my life.
Before I got to know Wildfire, the stables (as the riding school was always known) gladly accepted me as a volunteer and I became a regular helper on Saturday and Sunday mornings. My enthusiasm and obvious regard for the horses had been noted and occasionally I was offered a small payment for my services. Every now and again I was also given a free ride and after a time I managed to become a proficient rider. Luckily, I took to it very quickly and, after a couple of years, I was allowed to lead a group of paying novices. I was paid a little bit of money for what I regarded as a privilege, and sometimes the older riders would give me a tip for my services. I never felt free to mention this at home because I knew that it would only invite more taunting. Later, when I started riding more regularly at the stables, I did tell my mother but asked her not to tell anyone else.
One day during a half-term holiday I was busy at the stables helping to prepare the horses for a group riding session. By then, I not only held these animals in high esteem but felt a kind of love for them. I admired the high degree of sensitivity they showed to people and other horses, and liked the lifeforce within them that made them want to run for the utter joy of it. If you give a horse love, it often gives you love back – like cats and dogs, they are the sort of animals that need to be loved and cared for to be at their best. I had also soon come to realize that it was important to develop a healthy respect for these large animals, which can weigh up to half a ton.
On this day, one of the riders was a doctor’s wife who had gone to great lengths to look the part of a horsewoman: she wore all the traditional gear, including shiny, long black boots, white jodhpurs, a white blouse and a dark jacket, all surmounted by a black bowler hat. She also wore a white silk scarf around her neck, which was constantly catching in the w
ind and blowing this way and that – horses are quite nervous creatures and something like that is a sure way to unsettle them. Her mount that day was a mare called Honey, a beautiful chestnut standing at seventeen hands.
As I led Honey towards the rider I could detect the alarm beginning to surface in Honey’s eyes as the scarf continued to waft about all over the place. She started snorting, throwing her head about and generally acting alarmed. I thought she would soon calm down, but after the lady had mounted I began to sense the real possibility of danger. A stable girl was calmly attempting to fit the lady’s boot into the stirrup, while the unsettled Honey moved about. The lady was becoming increasingly frustrated with the situation and now acted with outstanding lack of insight. She decided to blame the horse for her predicament and, raising her riding crop, gave Honey a sharp whip across the rump. The horse had endured enough. She had experienced apprehension, as all riding-school horses do, at who might be her mount for today. Then she had been startled at being confronted by the sight of the doctor’s wife dressed in her formal hunt riding attire, with her scarf flashing about. This was followed by the lady in question seeking to mount her in the most clumsy manner possible and to end it all she had been whipped.
This was beyond endurance and she did what most horses naturally do at this point. She ran as fast as she could, dumping the good lady on her backside among all the muck of the stable yard. As I was standing nearby, I tried to grab Honey’s loose reins as she made off. Sensing that an attempt was being made to stop her, Honey lashed out with her rear legs. It nearly always seems to be an innocent bystander who suffers most in accidents. One of Honey’s flailing hooves kicked me hard in the left thigh just below my groin. The force was tremendous and I was knocked flying. I lay heavily on my back, feeling stunned and semi-paralysed. Within seconds I was suffering waves of nausea and pain, and felt sure that I was about to be sick.
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