Issue No. 25: THE FAMILY - MAM

As you may have gathered from what I’ve written so far, my mother was the ever present factor in mine and Tom’s lives. Dad may have been the eminence grise but she was the one who brought us up, fed us, clothed us and protected us. Why then did she both allow and participate in the radically different treatment of her two sons?


Mam Marries Tom's Dad - 1940

Mam was the middle one of five children and she had lived as a child in the 1920s in the Scotswood Road area of Newcastle – a very tough neighbourhood. She adored her brother, Charlie, who was three years older than her and also worshipped her father. She had a very fractious relationship with her mother. Charlie had tuberculosis and died in 1936, when Mam was 16. That same year her father died. Mam no longer had a buffer to her domineering mother. Just four years later Mam was married and left Newcastle for her new life in South Shields. Tom was born four years later. I knew most of this story when I was growing up. What I didn’t know, until my Dad died in the early 1980s, was that the man she married, Tom’s Dad, wasn’t my Dad as well.

In 1950, Mam’s husband (Tom’s Dad) died. All Mam ever said to me about him (years later) was that he was ‘sickly’. By this time she lived with Tom in a new council house. They lived next door to a slightly older couple and their young daughter. Mam made friends with them. The husband of the next door neighbour was my Dad. They started an affair and Mam became pregnant with me. She moved back to her mother’s house in Newcastle to give birth and then later returned to South Shields. Within a few months Mam, Tom and I moved to the Cleadon Park estate. Then began that strange upbringing and those fleeting but frequent visits from my father and the rather far-fetched ‘cover story’ to explain his absences which, in my dumb-assed way, I swallowed whole for the next 29 years.



Dad at War - 1943

You can look at Mam and Dad’s relationship in a number of ways. It could be viewed as a romantic liaison which continued for over 30 years, and where the welfare of their son was paramount. The bare facts are rather more damning. Mam betrayed her friend next door by having an affair with her husband. He betrayed his wife and daughter. Once their son was born, he continued this affair, even though his wife and daughter were then both aware of it and suffering as a result. Although the relationship was known to most people (including most of our neighbours in Cleadon Park, apparently) he insisted and even threatened violence to ensure that I was not told what was going on. I and not Tom was the ‘bairn’ that musn’t be told the truth. He compounded Tom’s misery at losing his Dad by treating him badly and turning Mam against him too. He ruined the relationship between Tom and me as a consequence. Even when I was older, both Mam and Dad refused to tell me the truth and forbade Tom and his new wife from telling me. I remember that, when I was twelve, I worked out, from the story that Mam had told me, that she had been married 25 years. Tom, his wife and I then went through the ridiculous process of buying Mam and Dad a silver anniversary present, which they accepted; all to preserve a ridiculous lie. The lie extended to my wife and kids. The truth only emerged when Dad was about to die from cancer, and only then because Mam couldn’t explain where he was and why I couldn’t see or contact him.

After his death, Mam became a very bitter and an even angrier woman. She blamed Dad’s wife for hanging onto him, refusing to accept the obvious fact that he had chosen to stay with her all those years, whilst continuing his affair with Mam ‘on the side’. Mam waged her own petty but vicious vendettas against Tom’s wife, her own older sister (whose long-term husband had also just died) and, briefly, against my wife, until I stopped her. When she was not quite 50, and when Dad was still alive, Mam suffered a heart attack, but recovered from it. Twenty odd years later, in the early 1990s, Mam had two strokes, and her mind went with the second one. She died, oblivious to the world around her, in a care home bed in 1993.

The story of my childhood and adolescent family life should end there but, of course, these stories never really end. Mam’s bad temper and volatility have left their mark on both Tom and me. We both developed quick and vicious tempers. Additionally, I have acquired Dad’s authoritarian demeanour and unwillingness to show any feelings other than anger. Taken together, their traits have made me into a highly controlling and manipulative adult and a person given to violent mood swings and abusive behaviour towards my own family. This, over the decades, has dramatically affected their lives in turn. All crimes and misdemeanours have their costs and consequences. Mam’s and Dad’s are still being worked out, I regret to say, long after their deaths.

Mam’s passing acted as the guillotine to my relationship with my brother. We last saw one another at her funeral twenty years ago. We have only spoken on the phone twice since then. There is no rancour between us, just an acceptance of the truth – finally.

 



Tom

Me







Postscript

Dear Reader

Thank you for sharing my own and very personal 'Tales of Childhood, True and False'. You have just read, as you may have surmised, the final tale. However, I do intend to gather these tales together and publish them as an ebook. I will, therefore, be in touch with you all one last time to let you know when this happens.

I wish you all peace of mind, health and happiness.....and a good Christmas!

Yours sincerely,

Robert Fenwick.

Issue No. 24: THE FAMILY - MY BROTHER TOM

There was much that divided my brother Tom and me. There was the age gap of seven plus years. This may not seem much to adults but, in effect, it is a generational chasm to children. He left school when I was seven and was married when I was twelve. He was a ‘Teddy Boy’ when I was at Junior School. My adolescent years were the 1960s and all that went with that decade.

I hero-worshipped Tom and, when he grew restless about facing a long apprenticeship in the shipyards and joined the army for a few years for adventure, I was lonely and saddened by his long absences from home, especially when he was posted to West Germany.

Tom had his circle of friends and I was too young to join in. In that brief period of shared childhood and adolescence, between my self-awareness at the age of five and when Tom left school when I was seven and a half, I remember too few incidents that brought his and my worlds together.

When Tom was in his early teens, he declared that he and his mates were going to cycle to Plessey Woods in Northumberland and camp out there for a week. This was miles away and Mam was worried about the distance and his welfare. However, he pointed out that there would be safety in numbers and, eventually, she relented. He then said that they would need lots of food for the week, so he raided the pantry with Mam’s consent and stocked up with a variety of tins, bread, margarine, jam, etc.

I remember being excited by the prospect of the cycle trip and convinced myself that I was going too, although I was only seven and my new bike had stabilisers on the back wheel. The large group of lads set off one morning from our house and Tom pedalled down the path and out into the street to join the others. I frantically tried to follow on my bike, but it unbalanced before I reached the front gate and tipped me into the hedge. I cried with frustration and impotence as the group cycled off into the distance.

All day I wondered how far they had travelled, whether they had reached their destination, where they had pitched their tents and what they had eaten for their meal. I didn’t have long to imagine. Before nightfall, the back door opened and Tom re-appeared. He explained that they had given up on the idea en route and turned back. Mam nodded knowingly.

“Right, put the food back in the pantry”, she said.

Tom replied “Can’t do that, Mam, we got hungry and ate it all!”

Turnips and Bonfires

Halloween and Bonfire Night were the highlights of the dark evenings on our estate. Just before Halloween Night, Tom would appear with a couple of giant ‘snadgies’ or turnips, which he and his mates had pinched from the farmer’s fields near Cleadon Hills. He expertly sliced off the top ‘lid’ of the turnip, gutted it (which was added to the lentils, potatoes and ham shank for Mam’s big pan of soup) and carved out the eyes, nose and mouth for the lantern’s head, before inserting the candle. There was no American-style ‘trick or treat’ in those days, just kids spooking each other with the gruesome lanterns and tales of ghosts and witches.

‘Bonty’ Night (or Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night) on 5th November was a great family occasion – but deadly dangerous. In our back field, on every piece of waste ground on our estate and in every estate and neighbourhood in the town, the kids had been building up massive piles of wood for the big fires for weeks beforehand. Some of the fires were huge, with wood of every description, tarpaulin, old doors and so on. There were often raids on other sites to pinch some of their wood. On Bonty Night, the pyres were set ablaze, surrounded often by whole families. ‘Tatties’ or ‘Chetties’, as we kids called them (aka potatoes) were roasted and fireworks set off. Trying to retrieve charred ‘spuds’ (aka potatoes) from a collapsing fire, whilst bangers were being thrown around, inevitably led to accidents year after year. We didn’t think about this or the terror that our cats and dogs went through. We loved the danger of it all – silly buggers!

Running Away from Home

Tom both loved and resented me at the same time, I guess. I didn’t realise the resentment at the time but, clearly, Dad discriminated between us so blatantly that Tom wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t resent me as the favourite. The fact that Dad also made Mam join in the criticism of Tom, when he was present, could only make matters worse. That’s why he treated Rob Wilding next door more like his little brother than me, and that’s why, one night, he ran away from home.

I remember only fragments of that night but those fragments are seared on my consciousness. It was very late at night. I had been asleep but had awakened and come downstairs because of a commotion. I was six years old. Mam was agitated and worried. Tom had left a note saying that he and his mate, Terry, had run away from home. The commotion had been the police visiting the house. I drifted off to sleep again on the settee. I awoke to find Dad in the room, still wearing his heavy overcoat and flat cap. I heard Mam say “I’ve got to tell the bairn the truth. He must know!” Dad became very, very angry and threatening and clenched his fists. I had never seen him like that before. He never physically punished me; he left all the smacking to Mam. He said in a clear, loud voice “If you do that, I’ll kill you!”

He meant what he said. I was so shocked that I jumped up, hugged both their legs and sobbed. They pretended that nothing had been said. I later wondered what Mam had wanted to tell Tom that had made Dad so angry. I never found out until more than twenty years later.

Dad went away again. In the early hours of the morning a policeman arrived with Tom. He had been found on Cleadon Hills. The helpful copper suggested that Mam should thrash him, and Mam duly obliged, venting all her pent up anger and frustration in the process. I cannot recall any rational conversation between Mam and Tom as to why he ran away, just him crying softly after his punishment behind his closed bedroom door.

Issue No. 23: THE FAMILY - DAD

In my childhood and early adolescent years, children mostly accepted the word of their parents without question. This was the case with me and Mam and Dad.

My recollections of my father are of a large man who was older than most of the other dads in the neighbourhood. For some reason best known to himself, he told me he was born in 1918, making him 34 when I was born. Many years later I discovered that he was, in fact, born 10 years earlier, in 1908. I saw him six days a week (never on a Sunday) but only for half an hour at dinner (lunch) times and for a couple of hours at most at tea times during the week. On Saturdays, he would be there most of the morning. He very rarely stayed the night. Mam explained to me, when I was about five or six, that he worked for the local Council as his main job but he also had a job with the Territorial Army, which meant him being away from home both during the week and at weekends. She showed me the photographs of him, with his Regimental Sergeant Major’s armband on and the three stripes on his sleeve, leading the marching troops from the barracks. Although other kids had their dads at home nearly all of the time, I was proud that mine was different, and that he was in charge of so many soldiers.

Although I saw him fleetingly most days, he still exerted a huge and dominant influence over the family. As you would expect from a ‘RSM’, he was opinionated and used to getting his own way. He was obsessed with timekeeping and hated tardiness. He didn’t expect me to slouch and remarked on many occasions that he had seen me round-shouldered in the street and told me to straighten up, walk briskly with my head up, chest out and swing my arms (I’m not kidding!). He didn’t like foreigners. He had served in the Desert War in the 8^th Army during World War 2 and in Italy, and had a particular dislike of Egyptians, Libyans, (etc), Italians and, for some unknown reason, Chinese waiters. Years before the U.S. Army applied the term in Vietnam, Dad labelled all Chinese ‘Charlie’. I guess this was a reference to the 'Charlie Chan' films.

Dad said that he had had a Grammar School education and, by sheer force of will and apparently superior ‘book knowledge’, he intellectually dominated my mother. She deferred to him in the matter of my education. In this, he spent quite some time (when we were together) ensuring that my spelling and arithmetic were up to scratch, before I sat the 11 plus exams. As I got older, into adolescence and then manhood, he became more strident in his views as to what I should do with my life, what courses I should follow, what career I should choose and what political views I should hold. He had an opinion on everything I did or wanted to do and was quick to tell me I was wrong if he thought otherwise. This lifelong domination caused a dichotomy in my adult life. I rebelled against practically every view or opinion he had on the world, whilst at the same time becoming domineering and overbearing with my own family. Psychologists say that, often, people try to escape from the spectre of a domineering father so fast that they end up morphing into one.

Bats and Boots

He loved sport and urged me to participate. In this, at least, he was successful. However, he had some odd ways of encouraging me. I was 11 and he knew that I was keen on (without being any good at) cricket. One day he brought home a cricket ‘bat’ for me. However, it wasn’t a normal cricket bat. It was handmade, apparently by someone who had never seen a cricket bat before. Butch, the dog next door, could have made a better one. The whole thing had been roughly hewn from a wooden block; you could see the chisel marks. The handle was uncovered and too short, so you couldn’t really get a proper grip on it. The rest of the bat was too long and too narrow. Worst of all, it was about two to three inches thick, which meant that it was unwieldy and that I could hardly lift it. The other kids laughed at it, which didn’t help. I didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings, so I said nothing.

Knowing that I also loved football (but unaware that I was still crap at it) Dad said that he would bring home a pair of football boots. All of the boys at the senior school had new, lightweight, low-slung boots. I was eager with anticipation. Dad came in one tea time and handed over a large paper bag. This was it! I lifted out a pair of battered brown, high-sided boots, which reached past my ankles and half way up my calves. On the sole, instead of studs, they had hard leather bars across. I looked incredulously at Dad. He was beaming at me. I smiled weakly in return and said thanks. The boots caused gales of laughter in the school dressing room before games lessons. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t have any studs. Why did they have bars instead? Were they Dad’s old footie boots? Is this what they wore after World War 1? Were they footie boots at all? Had he taken them from the corpse of a German or Italian soldier in the desert? It must be a German, I reasoned, no Italian would be seen dead in boots like these. The bars on the soles of the boots accumulated massive clods of mud in between them. I could hardly raise my feet from the mire, never mind run and kick a ball. Nevertheless, the overall effect of this was that I was the only kid to emerge from the field literally head and shoulders above the rest.

The Tooth Fairy

Dad was adamant that everything he said was right. My faith in him (and his opinions) was first shaken when I was twelve, still in short trousers and had to have a tooth out. This was the first time I had ever visited a dentist. Not many of my peers had experienced such a visit either, although there was some unusual speculation concerning a rumour that there was a homosexual dentist in town (‘gay’ wasn’t then part of people’s vocabulary). As with most rumours, everyone attested to his existence but nobody could actually say who he was. His identity took on mythological characteristics and he quickly became dubbed ‘The Tooth Fairy’. Two questions hung over this mystery. First, what did a homosexual dentist do (to patients) that made him different to other dentists? Secondly, how did you find out if your dentist was ‘The Tooth Fairy’? When I visited this particular dentist I pondered these questions (beneath the pain) but wisely (I thought) resolved to keep my mouth shut. However, given the circumstances, that was one resolution I could not possibly keep.

Dad had said that having the tooth out wouldn’t hurt. He was wrong. The needle was excruciating and, furthermore, I yelled with pain when the dentist pulled the tooth out before the anaesthetic had properly taken hold. I came out of the surgery into the waiting room and Dad was there.

‘I said that it wouldn’t hurt, didn’t I?’ he said, too quickly.

‘Ith hurth like hell!’ I shouted back, spitting out blood as I did so.

I refused to speak to him all the way home on the bus. He got the message.

‘Look’, he said, ‘I’ll make you some nice soup to drink. Is that okay?’

I said nothing.

He was smiling and cheery, in an anxious and forced way, when we returned home. Mam hadn’t yet arrived back home from the biscuit factory where she worked. He heated up some canned lentil soup and brought it to me on a tray as I sat beside the living room fire. I took a few spoonfuls, but my jaw was still paralysed by the anaesthetic and I couldn’t move my mouth properly. I dropped some of the soup onto my bare, untrousered knee and yelled as it burned me. Dad hadn’t let the soup cool. When the anaesthetic wore off, the pain from my scalded mouth kicked in and I couldn’t eat anything for days.

The one thing I could never properly comprehend as a child, but still unquestioningly accepted, was Dad’s relationship with my older brother, Tom. They hardly spoke to one another and seemed to keep their distance as much as possible. It was clear that Tom didn’t much like Dad but, more worryingly, Dad never had a good word to say about Tom. Tom hadn’t passed the 11 plus and Dad didn’t help him with any school work and showed no interest in him. For as long as I could remember, Dad disparaged him to his face and was unkind about him behind his back. He encouraged both Mam and me to join in this constant criticism, and this lasted until Dad died. Dad criticised me too, but never in such a cruel and sustained way. It was when Dad died that an explanation for this very odd behaviour was revealed. It brought into question all of my previous life and the childhood certainties upon which it was founded.