Chapter 26: Brother and Sister

Gordon was not impressed when Michael, now nearly five and ready for school, put on his parts. Sometimes he would cry and scream hysterically. Gordon isolated him in another room until he calmed down then he'd comfort him. Crying purged him. Afterwards, Michael felt better, more settled and secure in his mind. But it was not a permanent state. Hysteria, partly self-induced, partly-contrived for attention happened again and again.

"Isn't he ever going to grow out of it?"asked Gordon.

"Give him a chance, he's still only four,"defended Margaret.

His sister, Gwyn, was different. She was placid and not easily upset. She shared all her things willingly with Michael and they played happily together, because she always let him have his own way. She was goodness itself.

Her near-perfect behaviour never irritated Michael, except when Nan asked, "Why can't you behave yourself nicely like your sister?"

Everyone including Michael loved her . She had naturally pleasant ways. She was not precious, prissy or conceited. She never complained much during the illnesses which she endured most winters.

Michael and Gwyn had some really good times when they were little kids together, safe in the enclosed world of their Lancaster family. Michael liked the reassuring routines and rituals of daily life. He knew that so long as Monday was washing- day, Tuesday was ironing-day, Wednesday was shopping-day, Thursday was cleaning-day and Friday was baking-day, whilst the weekends were Dad's days, all was right with the world. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place. He felt secure.

He looked forward to washing-day, when his mother boiled many kettles of water to pour over the dirty linen in a dolly tub. The water was a faintly bluish colour because she put a dolly-blue dye in with lots of soapflakes.

Michael liked to push the clothes around with the posser -- but it was hard work and his mother took over after his first few attempts.

"I can do it! I can!"

"Give it here! All you are doing is splashing the water out onto the floor!"

The little kitchen would fill with steam and the already damp walls would stream with condensation.

Gwyn and Michael would help Margaret carry items of linen to the big, heavy mangle standing out in the yard and which used to be shared with Next-door.

"Keep your fingers out of the way," she'd say as she turned the handle and Michael fed clothes between the two heavy rollers.

The best bit was emptying the dolly tub. Margaret used the big saucepan, Michael a small one and Gwyn a tiny one.

"We're good helpers, aren't we Mam?" Michael queried, spilling water on the living-room lino as he made for the back door.

"Good helpers Mam?" repeated Gwyn as she followed him.

They poured some of the dirty water down the outside lav. When the tub was light enough, Margaret would tip it on its bottom rim and roll it out into the yard and pour the rest of the water out into the drain which ran down the back alley. Finally, she dried the lav seat with an old piece of towelling.

"I'll have a nice cup of tea now and have a sit down before I hang out the clothes in the yard. Who wants some Tizer?"

"Me!"

"Me!"

If it was a rainy day all of the wet garments had to go over the clothes horse in front of the fire. Michael hated that, especially in winter, because the fire was shielded by the linen and the room felt colder and more damp than usual.

Shopping was enjoyable. There was always something new to be spotted. They went to Reddrops now because Mam had several items on their 'Never Never'. When you paid, the money went shooting off inside a small container with a whooshing sound. It travelled overhead along a cable to the cashier in another part of the building. A minute later it returned with your change and a receipt. Michael wished that he had one of those at home. It would be nearly as interesting as his model Hornby train.

Little Gwyn wore a harness round her chest with reins attached. Big brother Michael was allowed to hold the reins. It meant Margaret was able to leave the pram at home. She walked ahead and Michael pretended that Gwyn was his horse and he was a man in charge, with a whip.

"Gee-up!" and "Whoa!" he'd shout. Gwyn used to obey him. It was great fun and made them both laugh.

"Stop that now!" said Margaret when they arrived at the busy town-centre, "It's too crowded for games!"

After they'd done all the shopping, a lot of it in the Co-op, because of the divi, they'd head for Penny Street and turn left into Marton Street. They'd run the last bit to their Nan's.
One day Gwyn tripped, fell and grazed a knee. She didn't cry much. She was very brave. She didn't blame Michael 'though he knew it was his fault for jerking her back suddenly on the reins.

Nan said, "You should be more careful with her Michael. She's not as strong as you."
Nan put a bandage on the graze and gave her a sweet. She gave Michael one too. They sat together on the settee sucking them while Nan and Mam chatted.

It was a lovely day. Opposite, Mrs. Wilson was sitting on her front door step when they left. She called across, "Eee, Margaret, aren't them two growing-up fast! They'll be running rings round you soon."

Michael ran round his mother. "Look Mrs Wilson, I'm running a ring round Mam!"

That did make Gwyn laugh.

"Little devil!"chuckled Mrs. Wilson as they turned the corner into Thurnham Street.

Best of all was baking day. Gwyn had her own little rolling-pin and Michael had a small mixing-bowl. Margaret let them make their own pastry for jam tarts and for a little apple pie She put the items into the oven at the side of the fire using old plates. The children would wait anxiously for them to finish baking.

"Aren't they ready yet Mam?"

"Patience!"

The results? Scrumptious!

Most winter afternoons, Margaret sang Gwyn to sleep and laid her down in her cot. Then Michael sat on Margaret's knee and she read him one of his favourite stories.

"You're getting a bit too heavy for this you know,"she said hugging him to her.

"Can I have the one about Sir Galahad Mam?"

"You had that one yesterday."

"Please Mam!"

"Oh, all right then. Once upon a time..."

Sometimes he fell asleep and woke an hour later, curled-up cosily on the big comfortable easy chair in front of the blazing fire.

Chapter 25: Another Dispersal

In 1937, it was becoming obvious that war was on the way again, despite the reluctance of most politicians to accept the inevitable consequences of Hitler's rule in Germany. However, common sense prevailed in some quarters and limited rearmament began. But the government wouldn't lift a finger against Franco's fascists in Spain. Only unofficial volunteers went there from Britain.

The rearming of Britain meant that there were new job opportunities for some. Always one with an eye for a chance, James Davies decided to move round Morecambe Bay, to Barrow-in-Furness. There was plenty of well-paid work in the shipyards, building submarines or labouring on the houses which were springing up on new estates. Beatrice and Tom and Julia, their two unmarried children, went with him.

James dictated terms to a Barrow builder before agreeing to be employed by him. "We'll start off how we mean to carry on," he told his son. "Best to know where we stand before we begin!" He and Tom started work on houses in Darbyshire Road. Many in the uncertain building trade, faced with the possibility of being laid-off without pay in bad weather, had opted for better jobs at Vickers. James and Tom were both skilled craftsmen and were able to command what were to them princely wages, plus good bonuses for quick work. They had an advantage because good tradesmen were in short supply. Unemployment was disappearing fast along with the prospects for a continuing peace.

Julia found a job in the office at Vickers. Beatrice stayed at home on her own. She had time on her hands for the first time in her life. She had money to spare. She and James bought a little Austin 7. Tom learned to drive it. He used it to take his girl-friends out. In return, he occasionally drove his mother and father back to Lancaster and Morecambe to see some of their other children. Malcolm had moved to Leeds with his new wife and Tom even drove his parents there on one occasion. All of them were earning more pay for shorter hours. Life seemed good.

Tom was having the time of his life. He was the youngest of the four brothers and the slightest in build of a diminutive family. He was small but strong, and extremely agile. He was quick-witted, sharp-tongued and had a fine intelligence. He was quick to see the solution to problems when they arose on the building-site. He was often called into the site office and consulted by the builder about the quickest and cheapest way to do an unusual or difficult job.

"You'll be wearing a collar and tie soon!" was his father's tart comment. Tom had spent a whole day in the office, away from the constructing of a house with James and their work-mates. Secretly, he was proud of Tom's ability. He'd always been a bit of a favourite son of James, the only one who could get away with being cheeky to the old man.

Tom spent money on clothes and was a success with the girls. He'd joined a local tennis club and was hard to beat because he was so quick about the court. The family regarded tennis as a sissy's game and when they saw him in his white shirt and flannels, he had to endure their ridicule. He didn't care -- it all helped to pull the birds, to get off with the girls as they said then.

He liked dancing too, and was good at it. He preferred ballroom-dancing to any other. "Off tripping the light fantastic tonight?" his mother would ask when he came down from the upstairs bathroom. He had shining, Brylcreamed hair, patent leather shoes and a white silk scarf. "Your Fred Astaire outfit, I see," his father noted. And it was true: it was Astaire, slightly built like himself, whom he emulated. Cutting a dash! Smiles for all! Devil may care! Like a lift in my car? Look out girls, Tom is out on the town!

Julia was the baby of the family and could not remember the hard times in Wales. She was a raven-haired, blue-eyed beauty with a sparkling personality. She earned good money and was independent of her father. One of the New Women, she ignored his orders about not going out so much, about coming in at a reasonable time. "I'll be in early. Promise! Early hours of the morning I mean," she'd say to James. He remonstrated with for wearing too much make-up and too short a skirt. Julia pleased herself and her mother was pleased for her, although she always took care to support James in his efforts to control Julia.

No chance of that!

One thing that she did do was keep her piano lessons going. James loved music, mainly old music hall songs. In Morecambe, he'd earned enough to buy a piano. He paid for Julia to learn to play and was delighted when she took to the instrument and had a certain flair in her playing. She went to Woolworths every week and bought song sheets, only sixpence each. Lots of her favourite songs were the ones she'd heard in films at the local cinemas. She soon learned quickly and was a player in demand at parties she went to every week.

Sometimes, she and Tom went out together but they always came home separately. Julia was usually home after Tom and sometimes brought boyfriends into the darkened downstairs lounge. "Shh!" she'd say. "They're asleep. Don't wake them up."

Beatrice was always awake, waiting for her to be home safely, but she never called down.

Once, Tom came in later than she and put on the electric light. He was surprised and a bit annoyed to see his sister lying there with her skirt up around her waist and her new boyfriend's hands all over her. He put out the light and left them to it. He never mentioned the matter to her. After all, she was only doing what other bloke's sisters were doing with him...

Chapter 24: Gordon and Margaret

They had a dance called a Progressive Barn Dance at Morecambe's Winter Garden. You started with a chosen partner and progressed to a new one several times during the course of the dance sequence. It was during one of these dances that Margaret Davies partnered Gordon Watson for a couple of minutes. She wondered if he had felt as thrilled as she was when this happened.

There was another dance called a Paul Jones. For this, there was one big outer circle of males and an inner one of females. The music started, a march, with the boys and men walking clockwise and the girls and women anti-clockwise. When the music stopped, you grabbed any partner near to you and the orchestra played music for a quickstep. Suddenly, it stopped again and you had to march round and find a different partner. It was during one of those dances that Margaret grabbed Gordon. He made no sign that he'd enjoyed dancing with her.

Margaret really enjoyed dancing. The house band was Dan Grey and his Ten Rhythm Boys. They played quick-steps, modern waltzes, fox-trots, tangos, the Charleston and the Black Bottom and other fad dances. It was very exciting being alive and young, dancing to live music.

During a dance called a Lady's Excuse Me, Margaret plucked up courage, tapped Joyce on the shoulder said, "Excuse Me!" and waltzed away with Gordon. Her dream had come true.
Later that evening, just before her brother Malcolm took her home, Gordon asked her to dance, twice.
Heaven!

Then he came round to their house one Sunday afternoon and asked her dad if he could take her to the pictures. James agreed, provided that they came straight home afterwards.
Paradise!

Their next date was a Friday. He took her to the Winter Gardens, Supper Dance and Cabaret (two shillings and sixpence, all inclusive).

Ecstasy!

After that, she and Joyce weren't friends again for a long time. They did not make it up for ages. At the wedding, Joyce was head-bridesmaid and secretly, chief mourner!

Gordon was liked by all of Margaret's family, including James, her father. He got on especially well with Joe Cotton, who had married sister Charlotte who was just a couple of years older than Margaret. Joe was a lovable rascal with a carefree attitude to life. James said that the trouble with Joe was that he didn't give a sod for anybody or anything. It didn't occur to James that it could have been an apt description of himself.

After they were married, Margaret and Gordon rented a squalid dwelling in St. Thomas Place, in Lancaster, not all that far from the Cottons. Gordon had quite a good job at Williamsons and didn't want Margaret to go out to work. As she had time on her hands she visited her sister in Lodge Street. But Gordon's mother, Nan, disapproved of Charlotte, who had had many boyfriends before Joe.

"That one has an eye for the men! Flighty!" muttered Nan to Gordon.

"Why do you spend so much time at your sister's?" she asked Margaret, frowning disapproval. Margaret loved going to see Charlotte. It relieved the boredom of being at home and it took her away from her mother-in-law who was always calling in, unexpectedly, at her rented hovel in Thurnham Place. Margaret loved playing with Charlotte's three little kiddies, all still under school age.

"When are you going to have one of your own?" asked Charlotte.

One day, Margaret was able to answer, "Soon!"

She had the baby at home, delivered safely by Dr.Ruxton. After that she didn't go to see Charlotte very often.

She still wrote weekly letters to her older sister, Rachel, in Wales. They had been very close when Margaret lived there. One week, Rachel wrote to say that two of her children had managed to pass an exam and were going to the local County School. If they did well there, the boy, Lance, would have a decent job away from the pits. His sister, Constance, might be able to avoid going into service, away from home.

Margaret was always influenced by Rachel who had been more like a second mother to her than a sister. She determined that when the time came, she'd make sure that her own child worked hard at school. She wanted her son to be a success in life! She wanted him to be educated, have lots of money and live happily ever after. She day-dreamed a fairy-tale existence for her son.

Chapter 23: Relations

Michael Watson had a very large extended family. His father, Gordon, kept his strongly held political opinions to himself whenever there was a family gathering on his wife's side of the family. He was wise to do so. They were a temperamental lot with widely differing views.

Her oldest sister, Rachel, had married a Welsh miner. He was a communist and she a conservative. He took the view that there was a class struggle that had to be fought. She believed the hard times they experienced during the recent long strikes were largely the fault of the workers themselves. Rachel's husband couldn't find work after the strikes and they and their four kids were poverty-stricken. Dick, Margaret's oldest brother, arranged for money and food parcels to be sent every week, from Morecambe, to Rachel and her family. This went on for over two years.

Michael's Uncle Dick was adamant in stating that he had no politics. He was an ardent royalist and a temperance freak. Being the oldest boy, he had long memories of a growing family going short of food because his father, James, spent too much money in pubs. His front bedroom window often had a Union Jack hanging from it. A picture of royalty was stuck to his front parlour window long after Coronation Day..

Some of the family liked a game of cards. If Dick was playing, alcohol, cigarettes and bad language would be forbidden. He was the oldest brother and tough like his father, so they all fell in line. If their father, James, was there, Dick would make excuses and go off home to his new wife. After his departure bottles and packets of fags would be produced and everyone would relax.

Dick loved Beatrice, his mother, dearly, and hated James. He remembered the evenings in Welsh pubs and orgies in a navvy's shack. He recalled the squandering of money, his father's bravado when faced with heavy gambling losses. He remembered how this philandering had cost his mother and the youngest kids at home dear. Sometimes, after a month away, James would return home empty-handed and hungry, demanding food from his hard-pressed wife. Dick saved what he could and gave his mother all his spare cash. James would take this and go and meet his village drinking mates.

Sometimes, despite Beatrice's meekness, there would be a row on his return and Beatrice would have a bruised face.

Apart from their physical strength and capacity for gruelling, hard, work the father and his eldest son had nothing in common. Dick took his first chance to find work away from his father. After they moved to Morecambe, he went into lodgings until he was married. He returned to the old family home only to see his mother. Dick detested his father.

Despite his Puritanism, Dick had an eye for attractive women and he liked dancing. When he was twenty years old, he met Molly, a dark-haired, round-faced, plump girl of eighteen and married her. He ignored the fact that she'd had many boy friends before him. Once they became a couple Dick was very possessive. If her long-lashed, brown eyes slanted sideways and she smiled her sweet smile at one of his brothers or some man she knew and whom they met in the street, he could turn nasty. He would give her a tongue-lashing when he had her on her own. However, he never harmed her physically.

They had only one daughter. Molly was spared the burden of almost unlimited pregnancies. She never endured the endless tasks of child-bearing and rearing which had been the lot of Dick's mother. Gentle Molly loved Dick dearly. She never felt resentment at her husband's dominating of her nor of his extreme and narrow views.

Molly was almost too soft-hearted. She liked to kiss and hug all of her nephews and nieces. The boys reached a certain age and didn't want to be slopped-over but they all liked her. When they met, she always found money from her purse for Michael to buy himself, "A little treat from your Aunt Molly!"

Peter Davies was Michael's favourite cousin. When he was little, Michael and his mother would occasionally catch a bus to Christie Avenue, near to Morecambe Football Club. His Aunt Belle and Uncle Tony lived there. A neighbour was Eric Bartholomew, who would become world-famous one day as Eric Morecambe. Eric's mother was friendly with Aunt Belle.

Belle and Margaret and their husbands were great friends. Belle was really beautiful, with dark hair and deep brown eyes. She was a vivacious, affectionate young woman but fickle. She would give you the world when you were with her, but forget you existed and break any promise she'd made you once you were out of her sight. If you wanted anything from Belle, you were wise to take it the moment that it was offered.

One day, Michael was playing with his cousin at Christie Avenue and listening, as usual, to the grown-ups.

"I liked that dress you were wearing last week, Belle."

"Did you? Just a sec.... Here take it! You have it! I'm fed up with it."

Or.... "Remember that material you said I could have Belle? You know the stuff you said you had left over from making your curtains."

"Did I Margaret? Oh dear, I forgot. I gave it to our Charlotte when she was here yesterday."

Like all his aunts, Belle was kind to Michael and she always gave him a slice of cake when he arrived and some sweets as he left. When he was a teenager, she'd moved to a street near Regent's Park, and he had become a secret smoker. He'd visit and she'd give him a packet of twenty Players cigarettes. "Here, you little so-and-so!" she'd say. "Don't let your mother see them or I'll be in trouble. And don't forget your Aunt Belle when you're out earning. You can take me to the Park Hotel for a gin and tonic."

Belle's husband, Tony, was the quiet one of the large family. In Morecambe, he worked for the same builder from 1925 until 1972. He became foreman and some said that he carried the firm. He was the only one of James Davies' sons who spent any time down a pit in South Wales when he was a boy. He'd persuaded his father to let him start work with his best friend, Billy, instead of working with his father and his older brothers. He did not want to do sub-contracted, fancy, plaster work away from home. He and Billy Jones went down the mine. Tony's job was opening and closing doors, to let the ponies and their wagons go through, to-and-from the coal face. Billy was much stronger than skinny Tony and he'd been set to work loading wagons.

It was nearly a fortnight after they'd started work when Tony heard part of the roof crash to the floor. There were shouts and screams from down the line. He left his post and watched the desperate struggle of the half-naked men to free the half-buried body of Billy from a pile of rubble. There was hardly a mark on him when they freed him, but his neck was broken and he was dead.

Tony was horrified. He vomited, then fled the scene, running all the way to the pit bottom where the cage came down. But the rescuers carrying the stretcher followed him. He journeyed to the surface in the same cage as Billy's body. From the top he ran all the way home.

His father was angry with his wife for persuading him to let the boy work at the pit. For the rest of his life, Tony suffered from claustrophobia and had terrible dreams about being trapped in enclosed spaces. He always had to sleep with the bedroom door and windows wide open and he found crowds unbearably stifling and the cause of panic attacks. He avoided all confined spaces.

Michael never had a long conversation with the quiet man but he remembered with affection his murmured, "Hello son." And "Cheerio, Michael. Be a good boy for your Mam!"

"I will Uncle Tony. Thanks, Uncle Tony!" he'd say as he pocketed the parting gift of a tanner.

Chapter 22: Grandpop

Michael was a very inquisitive child. He liked listening to the grown-ups talk and gossip. He might be playing under the table with his toys but he would also be listening to what they were saying. He might be sitting on a chair looking at one of his books, but he was taking in the words he heard. Some of it, he only made sense of when he grew older.

"Big ears!" his Nan called him.

He heard many stories about his Mam's dad. The aunts and uncles were always talking about him and their lives with each other back in Wales. Michael was able to imagine what it was like then.
James Davies was called 'Jimmy' by his wife, Beatrice, and by his friends. He was 'Pop' to his nine sons and daughters and their spouses. He was 'Grandpop' to their kids.

Ever since he'd left school in 1892 at twelve, he'd been a roamer. Determined not to go down the mines in his native Wales, he was taken-on by a local man as an unofficial 'apprentice'. He followed his gaffer wherever he went looking for work, sometimes fifty miles or more.

They sought projects that paid well for hard labour and long hours. They worked on railways and roads, constructions and demolitions. Often they slept rough under hedges or in primitive, temporary dwellings; sometimes in isolation, often in riotous navvy towns. Once they worked up on a bridge but they never went down a pit.

There were six of them, including another boy from his village. What they had in common was the loss of a close friend or relative in a mining disaster, not headline-making ones, just local tragedies which snatched a few loved ones away.

Cinemas were being built. On their travels, they all picked up a variety of skills. They became specialists in ornate plastering. The gaffer had learned to read and he scanned the Western Echo for advertisements for plasterers. There was hardly a town or village cinema which they had not worked on as a team or as individuals.

Eventually, James left the gaffer, when he was old enough to stand-up to him and thrash him if it came to his objecting. He left to work with two of his own sons. For several years they prospered.

Then the work dried up. Gloom and depression spread over the whole region. James knew it was time to move on. Like his old gaffer, he found work by reading the newspapers, this time the national ones. Morecambe, in Lancashire, needed workers on a building site so he and his oldest boy, Malcolm, went by train via Pontypool Road, Crewe and Lancaster all the way to the North West.

He was only a little guy. Aged 40, he was fit as a fiddle, but already his once jet black hair was becoming white though his drooping moustache was so dark that the nicotine stains on it hardly showed.

He was a hard man: hard-working, hard-drinking, a hard-fighting man who knew nothing about Queensberry Rules! His sons obeyed his every command and kept strictly in line. He only spent a little of his time at home with his wife and the other offspring but they too knew who was boss when he was around.

Morecambe turned out to be good for him. He rented a decent house near the Battery Hotel and sent for his family, a few at a time. Margaret Watson, aged thirteen, was the last to arrive. Before moving to Morecambe, for four years she had been living with her oldest sister. Her sister was married at sixteen and had three kids of her own. It was a sensible arrangement which had relieved pressure on the family household and Margaret was a great help with Rachel's infants.

In late August, 1923, Margaret arrived at the Promenade Station, after the long train journey, all on her own. It had been a tremendous adventure for a young girl, who had never been outside her enfolded Welsh valley.

James was there on the platform waiting for her. He gave her a hug and took hold of her four paper carrier bags. He hired a horse-drawn laundau for them to be taken along the promenade to her new home. There were crowds of people and twinkling lights everywhere in the dusky evening. She felt like a princess in a magic coach. The place gave her a sense of wonder which she kept for the rest of her life. She loved Morecambe, a boom town during the years of national depression!

James was content. Apart from Rachel, who had married a miner and stayed back in Wales, he now had all of his family around him. Eventually, he moved to a smaller house at Torrisholme, where he and Beatrice were visited regularly on Sundays by most of the clan. He held court in the drinking club in Torrisholme Square, a happy, merry, sometimes very merry man.

He'd always been a bit weird. When his favourite daughter, beautiful Margaret, married presentable Gordon Watson, whose company he enjoyed, he nevertheless refused to go to the wedding. He stayed at home with a bottle of whiskey, got drunk and maudlin and cried to himself, "I'm getting old. I'm getting old."

Beatrice kept quiet. She just let him be. At times, she too had experienced his quite brutal hardness.
Margaret Watson, formerly Davies, was the favourite of her father and her brother, Malcolm. When James returned with his sons from working away, Margaret would go and meet them at the railway-station and her heart would leap when she saw the steam train come puffing round the bend.
Her returning older brothers would greet her and her dad would lift her up, give her a big kiss and smile.

"How's my princess then?"

He'd lower her gently to the ground then he'd walk with her holding his hand, all the way home, not diverting into one of the pubs on the way. She would chatter about what the new baby at home had been doing -- there was always a new baby -- and how she was getting on at school. She was a happy child, everybody succumbed to her winning ways, and her father adored her. She was over the moon when she was sent for from Wales to join her parents in Morecambe.

When she left Balmoral Road school, at fourteen, it was James who insisted she was not to go out to work She was to stay at home and help her mother. James would see she was all right for pocket-money. He made sure that she always had nice clothes and had everything that the other working children had. None of her brothers and sisters resented her preferential treatment because she did not take advantage of it and she was so nice to everyone. The older ones did feel that they had known the really hard times and that the younger five didn't know how lucky they were but they were pleased for them.

One snag for her was that her father was over-protective. She did not have the opportunities that her older sister, flashing-eyed, flapper Charlotte had, to attract local boys. Margaret was seventeen before her older brother, Malcolm, persuaded James to let her go to a dance at the Empress Ballroom in the Winter Gardens.

Malcolm didn't mind that much when he had to promise to have Margaret back in the house a whole hour before the dance ended. But it did cramp his style with the local girls quite a bit so he refused to take Margaret with him every Saturday night.

Malcolm was the third child, the second oldest boy of the family. There were four others who had died, two as babies and two as infants but he couldn't remember any of them. His mother did and they were the main reason for the habitually sad expression on her face.

Malcolm got on well with all of the family, especially his father. Like Dick, his older brother, he'd worked as part of the labouring gang with his dad all over South Wales. Naturally rebellious by nature, he was loyal to his father but fell out with some of the contractors who employed them. No taller than James, he inherited his father's strength but did not always use it wisely. He loved the pubs which his dad took him into and was just as friendly as James, until he had one too many. Then the shit might hit the fan! He started brawls and his father and brothers had to help him end them, sometimes his arms flailing and his feet kicking-out as they man-handled him away from surprised strangers.

He was never arrested for behaving badly. In those days, police kept away from working-class ghettos and especially from navvy camps. So long as they only fought amongst themselves, didn't commit murder or damage property, they could get on with it. Most publicans kept a heavy piece of timber under the bar and employed one-or-two likely lads on a 'free drinks' basis in return for helping with 'aggravation'.

Everywhere was the same in those days It could be quite rowdy in Lancaster, especially when the King's Own were stationed at Bowerham Barracks. But the Winter Gardens at Morecambe was deemed a safe place for Margaret to go to. Nevertheless, James insisted that Malcolm keep a close eye on her.

Before she went for the first time, the family cleared a space in their sitting-room. They put a record on the wind-up gramophone and Malcolm showed her how to waltz. She soon picked it up and he assured her that those few steps were the basis of most Olde Tyme Dances. And all you needed to get by at ballroom dancing was to remember to make your feet go 'slow, slow, quick-quick, slow' as you toddled around the dance floor.

"You'll never be short of partners!" Malcolm stated with conviction.

Despite his reassurances, it was with butterflies in her stomach that she went with him to the dancehall. They walked along the promenade from the Battery Hotel and went up the steps to the entrance of the building which she had only seen from the outside during daytime.

There were hundreds of people already inside. There was a polished wooden dance floor. Girls waited on one side to be asked to dance. There was a bar crowded with young men. There were thick carpets! Electric lights illuminated everything and everybody from overhead and shone from brackets on tastefully decorated walls! There was a richness of crimson-and-gold in the drapes and curtains and the painted walls. The girls wore many-splendoured things and the men were in their Sunday-best outfits. Malcolm showed her the cloakroom where she should leave her coat and where the Ladies' room was.
Soon, he was able to go off on his own because her young friend Joyce was there. She came over and greeted her. She told Malcolm she would look after Margaret. Gratefully, he departed to the bar to meet his cronies.

It was true: all you needed was to be able to waltz. She had six dances that first night with six different boys. Joyce asked Margaret whether her boyfriend's friend could take Margaret home. She had to say no, because of the promise to her father. It didn't worry her, because she didn't like the look of the youth with oily hair and a spotty face. On the other hand the older boy who was taking Joyce home really attracted her and she felt a tingling go up-and-down her spine when he shook her hand as Joyce introduced them.

"Gordon," she said, "this is my friend Margaret. We used to be friends, back in Wales."

He smiled then he helped Joyce on with her coat.

"See you next week then. Bye!" said Joyce. Margaret went looking for her brother. He was not pleased to see her because he had met a new girl who he wanted to take home. Fearful of breaking his promise to his father, he had to go home early with Margaret. As they left from the ballroom, he watched furiously as one of his friends whirled the girl of his choice round the dance floor.

He found it difficult to respond to Margaret's enthusiasm as they walked home. Margaret had enjoyed every moment of her evening out.

"You will take me again, won't you Malcolm?"

"I suppose so."

"Next week?"

"I'll have to see about that."

"Please Malcolm!"

"I said, I'll think about it."

That night, Margaret waltzed through her dreams and her partner was the young man -- Joyce's boyfriend.

Chapter 21: Sergeant Eli Watson

Lancaster War Memorial, in the grounds of the Town Hall

Gordon did not tell Michael the reason why they were going for a walk one evening in May. They strolled across town just after six, after all the shops had closed for the day. They went up Church Street and into the quiet of St Mary's. The reason for Gordon going there was the anniversary of his father's death, during the Great War, near Ypres.

Gordon could be quite secretive about some things, especially things which affected him personally. He never told Michael much about his past. He was a very emotional man but had always tried to hide it. Big boys didn't cry!

Eli Watson's second regiment, The King's Own Lancaster, was formed in 1600 and was in the forefront of many Imperialist actions for over 350 years. At Culloden, it was part of the army which inflicted on the Scots a merciless drubbing and massacre. In South Africa, at the very end of the nineteenth century, it fought the Boers, in that war which saw the British build concentration camps, nearly 40 years before Hitler's. There were other actions subduing civilian populations in Abyssinia and India.

Bloody battles were fought bravely against fearsome foes all over the globe, helping to maintain order in the British Empire. In the First World War, one battalion served the duration in France and endured unbelievable losses and privations. Others were in India at the start of the 1914-1918 conflict and moved on to Salonika or trained new recruits in England.

When the then often despised regulars were back from abroad, before the First World War, the common soldiers would infiltrate the town from Bowerham Barracks, all looking for booze, most for women and a few for trouble.

Troublemakers were usually handed over to the military for punishment and seldom appeared in the local court. There were pubs in nearly every street for quenching their thirsts and part time whores ready to satisfy their other needs. If they did not find what they wanted in the pubs, it was well-known they'd find what they needed in China Lane, Bridge Street or one or two other streets -- slums where prostitutes lived.

Tattered flags and various other memorials to the regiment dominated the interior of Lancaster Priory Church.

When Michael visited the place with his father, one of the things they did was look at the book which listed the names of those who'd died in the First World War. The book was in a glass case. Gordon was looking for Eli Watson's name. Somebody turned the book to a fresh page every day. Gordon had been there before but he was always disappointed because it was never at the right page with Eli's name on it.

"Come and sit down over here," Gordon whispered to Michael.

"All right Dad," Michael whispered back and he tiptoed quietly behind his father and sat down under all the flags, some going back as far as 1680.

His father knelt and started to pray. When he sat down again, he took his hanky out of his pocket and wiped his eyes. Michael had never seen his Dad cry before.

"What's wrong, Dad?" he whispered.
"Nothing son! It's nothing. I was just casting my mind back."

He put his arm round Michael's shoulders and gave him a hug. Then they sat there quietly for a few minutes.

A woman in a black hat and black coat came in. They stood up to go. The woman recognised Gordon,

"Hello Gordon," she murmured. "Been paying your respects? Aye, there'll be a few of us here for that today."

Many pals had all been killed on the same day as Gordon's Dad. Many people in Lancaster still had that date engraved on their hearts.

Gordon was just 11 years old when Eli was killed. Michael thought it strange that his Dad rarely spoke about him but he must have loved him and remembered him. He was sure that's why he had been crying.

Eli had been a regular soldier who had joined up, underage, in an East Lancashire Regiment, at Fulwood Barracks, Preston in 1887. He'd run away from his London home and enlisted using a false name. He met Nan and married her in Preston. The Boer War was over and he found peacetime sodiering boring. He decided to go absent without leave. After he deserted his regiment, he became a family man and moved to the anonymity of Lancaster using his real name.. When the First World War started, his patriotic feelings emerged and drove him to re-enlist, this time in the Lancaster Kings Own, using his proper name.

There was a recruiting drive in Lancaster and a big parade, led by a brass band, playing brain-turning music. Sheep led by donkeys they went lambs to the slaughter. He was killed at the Second Battle of Ypres on the 5th May, 1915. Many of his comrades died there too. He was commemorated on the Menin Gate, Ypres, as well as on the Lancaster War Memorial.

Michael wasn't born until long after his death but he knew what he looked like. During his childhood, there was always a photograph of Eli displayed prominently in the house. It was enlarged from a smaller black and white photograph and someone had tried to colour it but it didn't look right. The enlargement hadn't worked either because the face, in profile, was blurred.

However, Michael could see that it was the same face as the one in the photograph at his Nan's. This was also in an oval frame but bigger. It showed a fierce-looking man in soldier's uniform. He was seated and leaning forward on a walking stick. His peaked cap was worn straight on his head. He had a sergeant's stripes. He had a black, drooping moustache and looked extremely stern.

This photo was very lifelike. When Michael was at his Nan's, in the room alone with the image, he felt uneasy. The photo was hung high on the wall above the mantelpiece. Eli had piercing eyes and it didn't matter where you were in the room. When you looked at the photograph, the eyes were staring straight at you.

Michael felt Eli was a bit like God, who he was learning about at Sunday School. He'd been told God was watching him. No matter what he did, no matter where he was, God would see him. If he did anything wrong, he was told, one day God would punish him.

After Nan married again, the photograph stayed where it was. Every day, for the rest of his life, Michael's new granddad, Henry, would see his old friend, Eli, staring down at him disapprovingly, judging his every word and movement.

Grandad Henry Tomlinson was very fond of Michael. He would take him for a walk, whenever he had the opportunity, and weather permitting. At other times, he would sit him on his knee and tell him stories. He was a good-story-teller and Michael liked it when he imitated the voices of strange people or animals in his tales.

A shy man in adult company, tall, grey-haired, balding Henry was completely at ease when he had Michael to himself. He wore his best three piece suit when he came for Michael. His brown shoes were polished. Michael was fascinated by the gold watch which he kept in his waistcoat pocket and the gold-linked chain from which it hung. Henry would fiddle the watch out of his pocket and put it next to Michael's ear.

"Can you hear it ticking lad?"

Best of all, Michael liked Grandad to tell him about his adventures in the war and how his friend, Eli, had saved his life, when he was wounded in France. Eli had crawled out into no-man's-land, under fire from the nearby German trenches, and dragged him to safety behind their own lines. Now, Henry was married to Eli's widow and looking after her.

Grandad Henry was a kind, gentle, nervous man, who still suffered from shell-shock. His facial muscles sometimes twitched uncontrollably and his hands would shake. He also had a bad cough because his lungs were permanently affected by gas he had breathed in during the war. His cough wasn't helped by the work he did at Standfast's, a factory on Caton Road, beyond Skerton Bridge, where he breathed in lots of fumes, which were to contribute to his early death in 1938.

Nan had taken quite a lot of persuading but after his war, he came back to wed her. He courted his dead friend, Eli's, widow for a long time. Nan had only married him eventually, on the clear understanding that he would be moving into her house and she would be in charge there. Under no circumstances was he to discipline or even express an opinion about her boys and how she brought them up. This turned out to be no problem because he was nothing but a benevolent presence in the household.

It seemed to be a quite successful marriage. Henry had always lived in Lancaster, apart from four years in the King's Own, during the war. He wasn't all that bright but made the most of his limited opportunities. He'd always held a job, sometimes an unpleasant one of the kind that people don't always appreciate enough. Gordon was fond of his step-father and told Brian Howson, "It's the Henrys of this world that make the world go round."

For a time he'd worked on midden carts, collected night soil buckets from the houses not on mains sewerage and emptied dustbins round town. He was not very talkative but his mates always liked him. He lived at home with an invalid mother, until she died. He always supported and cared for her. After a hard day's work, he had to do most of the housework. He paid a neighbour to do the shopping.
After his mother died, he changed his job. Three evenings a week, just for a couple of hours, he met some of his work-mates from Standfast's in the Carpenters Arms. They had a couple of pints of mild-and-bitter and a game of cards or dominoes. He was quite good at dominoes but found it hard to concentrate and remember which cards had gone if they played anything more complicated than Pontoon.

None of the lads victimised him or tried to take advantage of his simple, uncomplicated ways. Often, they would tell him their troubles, knowing he wouldn't blab, knowing his was a sympathetic ear.
Sometimes when Michael sat on his granddad's knee, he would try and take his signet ring off.

"That'll never come off lad, not until I'm pushing up the daisies," his Grandad used to say. "You never can tell, it might be yours one day." No matter how hard Michael tried, he'd never been able to get that ring off his Grandad's finger, although he tried as hard as he could on numerous occasions.

It was true what Henry said. The ring stayed on his finger until the day that he died. Gordon wore it after that and when Gordon died in 1983, just as Henry had hinted, it passed to Michael.

Chapter 20: Margaret

Margaret knew she had a good husband and a good marriage, even if Gordon and she saw some things differently. He was too idealistic. She was sensible and practical -- and a very determined young lady. She knew what she was doing. Her main achievement in life, so far, had been taking Gordon away from her attractive friend, Joyce, and marrying him. Sometimes she wondered how she had had the nerve. Now, her main thoughts were for the welfare of her children. Funny really, she often thought of them as 'her' children rather than 'our' children. Gordon was the provider, a means to an end, she was their mother, the home-maker!

Margaret was more convinced than ever that she had to move away from Edward Street. She needed to escape the dampness of the house, the cramped and unsanitary conditions and her bossy mother-in-law.

Her friend Sheila had told her that she and Jack were going to move soon, to a Corporation house.

"Jack's fed up with teaching at the Grammar School. Place of privilege, he calls it. He's got a new post at Skerton School. We'll be moving during the Christmas holidays."

Margaret assumed that what Gordon had told her about Jack thinking of going off to join the Spanish Republican Army must no longer be true. She kept her thoughts to herself.

"Don't you fancy buying a house of your own?" Margaret asked Sheila, thinking that they ought to be able to afford it. Jack must be earning more than Gordon. If she and Gordon had ambitions to buy a house why didn't the Matthews share those ambitions? Margaret could not understand it. By being thrifty, Gordon and she were well on the way to saving a deposit.

"Oh no," replied Sheila somewhat primly. "Jack says, 'All property is theft.' He says everybody should be provided with a decent Corporation house. All the landlords should be done away with. He won't hear of us owning a property.!"

That didn't make any sense at all to Margaret, but she did not pursue the matter. What they did was their affair. She hoped that Gordon would not be influenced by Jack's thinking. Jack already had too much influence over her husband and he'd only known him five minutes.

Now that Sheila might be on the move, Margaret's dissatisfaction intensified. She was going to feel even more isolated in that district away from all her relatives, apart from one sister in Lodge Street, whom she hardly ever saw.

It was all right for Gordon. He wasn't stuck there in the house all day and every day. He had his work and his friends in his department.

Who did she have? Well, old Aunt Elsie was good company. There was her loyal friend, Joyce, who occasionally came to see her. She was always good for a laugh! There was Sheila Matthews, who brought Rob to play with Michael regularly. Sheila was the only young wife she knew. The only one with young children like hers. The only one with similar day-to-day problems. And now, she was thinking of moving miles away.

"My life's all routine, day in and day out. Nothing interesting ever seems to happen."

She was more and more determined that she was going to make things happen. Aunt Elsie was right: they needed a place of their own.

Her new doctor, the one who had replaced Doctor Ruxton after his arrest and subsequent execution, agreed with her. If delicate Gwyn, was to survive, they would have to live in a better place. The baby had barely survived two winter bouts of congestion of the lungs and Margaret was terrified that she might die.

That new house she longed for was definitely a possibility -- but still many months away. Gordon was quite well-paid and every Friday, he came straight home, no diverting to a pub, unlike some, and handed her his pay-packet. She put it on the mantelpiece behind the clock until after tea. When the children had gone to bed and were asleep, she opened his pay envelope and doled out the money.

Striking miners at Harworth Colliery, Nottinghamshire in 1937, reading the Daily Herald. 
Image: Daily Herald Archive/Science & Society Picture Library

Most she kept in her purse for house-keeping and for buying Gordon's Daily Herald. Smaller sums were set aside and placed in tins which she kept in the kitchen cupboard. There was a tin for the rent money and others for fuel, clothes and doctor's bills. There was one for their compulsory holiday week in August, when Gordon was paid no wages.

She hoped that next year they'd be able to go for a week to Barrow because her mum and dad had just moved there. They'd been married seven years and it would be nice to have a holiday away , their first ever, and marvellous to see her folks.

There was yet another tin for Christmas money, for the kids' presents and an expensive chicken.

Her very special tin contained a good sum of money. By careful housekeeping, she was slowly accumulating cash for that new house out in the suburbs. She wanted to be away from the smoke and grime, away from the smell of beer from Mitchell's brewery.

Finally, she handed Gordon his few bob, enough for a three-penny bet on a two-way double, each day at work, where a bookies' runner collected bets from the men. She conceded a sixpence for his Littlewoods football pools. There was also a new extra expense, which she resented, for his union dues. Gordon insisted and she knew she could only go so far in getting her own way. After all, he'd given up all of his smoking and most of his drinking when they decided to save for the new house.

One good thing about his friendship with Jack was that it didn't cost much because the discussion group usually met at the Matthews' house. To Margaret's way of thinking, all they wasted there was time and their breath.

Margaret was a good cook and there was always a dinner, with meat, sustenance for the bread-winner, as soon as Gordon got in from work. On Saturday and Sunday they had a roast. They all shared that. What was left was warmed up for Gordon on Monday. Soup made from the bones did on Tuesday. She bought a nice, lean, lamb chop on Wednesday for Gordon, Michael had what was left on the bone off his father's plate. It was liver on Thursday, a little bit for everybody, and boiled ham, Michael's favourite, on Friday.

The weekend joint went a long way because Burt, on the Lancaster Indoor Market, always selected her a decent piece of beef.

She bought material off the Market and made most of her own and the children's clothes, using the sewing-machine with a foot-pedal that she'd had as a wedding present. Footwear was a problem because growing feet meant constant, new replacements.

Luckily, Gordon had taught himself cobbling skills and he repaired hers and his own boots and shoes. He had a shoe last and sat cross-legged in front of the fire using all the proper tools which he'd acquired before he married. He also cleaned and polished all the footwear.

She wished that they had a more varied social life. The only time they went out as a family was to visit relatives. If the weather was very good, a few of them would make the trip out to the sands at Morecambe or on the rocks near Heysham Head. They took a picnic lunch. Bus fares and a few pence for the occasional ice-cream and jug of tea meant the outings did not cost much.

When Gordon was at home, they made their own entertainment, playing with the children, having a game of cards, writing letters to distant relatives, reading library books and the newspaper. She liked romantic novels and Gordon's favourites were 'Sapper', P.G. Wodehouse and P.C.Wren. Now he was reading H.G.Wells and Bernard Shaw.

Jack had given him a reading list of 'suitable' books which she had to borrow or order from the library. He was forever bringing booklets and pamphlets home from his meetings and absorbing their contents. She couldn't be bothered with any of that stuff and felt shut out.

Now that they had finally won recognition for that union of his, he started spending some evenings reading rule books. He was the Secretary and worked for ages writing the minutes of meetings in a leather-bound volume. His handwriting was an immaculate, beautiful copperplate. How bored she was with him and his political obsessions! It seemed to her that he was becoming far too interested in learning about trades unions and his blooming Labour Party. She hoped that if Jack moved to Ryelands, Gordon would give up his blessed meetings.

An important thing was that she now had the new doctor's complete backing for trying to buy the new place she dreamed of. He agreed the dampness in their dwelling could be a killer! She would make sure that Gordon tried even harder to find the money they needed.

It was beyond her why he was so set against doing well-paid overtime. Gordon said it was because, "A man should have a decent week's wage for a decent week's work. The rest of my time should be my own." "Overtime," he said, "is the working man's enemy and the boss's best friend! The union's fighting for shorter hours. There's more to life than having plenty of money!"

Margaret thought, "That sounds like Jack speaking."

Chapter 19: Gordon's Problems

Gordon had had a hard upbringing, his mother being a war widow. His father's death when Gordon was eleven, and just about at the age of reasoning, affected him for life. As an adolescent he was gloomily philosophical, observing and learning about his world and the planet he lived on.

He had intense feelings about injustices and found some comfort in partly reconciling a strict church upbringing and a suffering Christ with his first political thoughts.

But why, he asked himself, should he pray only 'for the faithful departed'? He could not accept that, or other parts of the church service What about the good and kind 'unfaithful departed'? Maybe one should pray most of all for the bad and the wicked?

By the time he was married, he was a lapsed churchgoer, but had a church wedding at his bride's insistence. He'd become a pragmatist, very interested in practical politics, based on simple slogans like 'All men are equal'. At that time, 'Some are more equal than others' didn't come into it!

He saw the Labour Party as the way to salvation. Despite the failings of the first Labour Government and the shortcomings and treachery of its leader, Ramsay MacDonald, he remained a true-believer that one day, his party would have a good majority and start to create a new Jerusalem, banishing the 'dark satanic mills', and all the evils which he thought stemmed from them, so that all could have a fair share in 'England's green and pleasant land'.

By 1937, there was plenty of talk about another war coming. It disturbed Gordon greatly, because of what had happened to his father Eli, and millions of others, in the last conflict. Gordon knew only too well what the consequences of war were and he had no time for war-mongers. He wasn't alone there. The members of Jack's discussion group were all opposed to war. Jack seemed to be changing his mind.

Republican troops at Guadalajara, 1937. Image: German Federal Archive,
via Wikimedia

At a recent meeting, he was really steamed up about what was happening in Spain. At the end of one of his long-winded outpourings he'd said, "I'm beginning to think that the likes of us should be doing a bit more than just sitting around talking about it."

One of the other members asked, "How do you mean? What are you getting at Jack?"

"I mean we're nothing more than armchair socialists. Shouldn't we be doing something to really help the Republicans against that swine Franco, and the Fascists who are backing him?"

"We send what we can afford Jack, to help on the medical side," protested the other.

"I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about going there and really helping."

"You don't mean fighting Jack! I thought that we were supposed to be a pacifist group! Wars solve nothing!"

It was obvious that Jack was no longer able to endorse those views. "Times are changing," he said. "We'll have to change with them."

"Principles are principles!" retorted the other. "It won't help if we start finding good reasons to do bad things."

Jack ended the discussion with, "Principles are made to be broken! That's a good principle!"

Gordon kept quiet. His own thinking had been developing along the lines of Jack's. Perhaps there were times when there was no peaceful alternative. Could he stand by and see his wife and family bombed or shot by an enemy? That was what was happening to innocents in Spain.

People began to leave. The meeting was over. No-one was keen on pursuing the matter any further.

Gordon was the last to depart. "You're not really thinking of going, are you Jack?" he asked his friend.

"I'm thinking about it. Just thinking. So don't say anything to Margaret, will you?"

"No, of course not Jack. See you on Thursday!"

They shook hands and Gordon went off down the long, steep slope to home.

As soon as he got in he told Margaret what was in Jack's mind. "Not a word to Sheila!"

"Course not!" she responded, "Do you think I'm stupid?"

Like most people in the country, Gordon dreaded another war. People didn't want another conflict. Memories were all too fresh of the last one. You'd only to look at the long list on the War Memorial. Lancaster was full of war widows and grieving relatives from the last one, ' The war to end all wars'!

With some cynicism and bitterness, Gordon noted that the family names of those who were most vociferous about trying to stop Hitler and his Nazis were conspicuous by their absence on the Lancaster list of dead soldiers.

"Some like to talk! Others have to do!" he told Margaret.

Quite apart from the world's problems, Gordon had plenty to worry about in his own life. He agreed with Margaret that he was too involved with things outside the household. It was becoming a real problem at home. His union activities could bring him trouble which could affect his family. His principles might be interfering with his real priorities and responsibilities. It wasn't just himself to be considered. He was a family man. His loyalties were split.

Gwyn, his baby daughter, was far from well. Michael, his son, kept on having nightmares. The two of them kept him awake half the night and he was beginning to feel the strain.

"I can't go on like this," he thought. "Something has to give."

At work, things never seemed to improve. Their department was always too hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. Old health and safety regulations were not being applied; new ones were not being introduced. There had only a few days holiday a year and all were without pay. The bosses hired-and-fired, without warning or compensation. When it suited them, they got rid of you, even skilled tradesmen like himself. His best friend, Brian Howson, was the latest work-mate to be shown the door He had been given just one week's notice then -- out!

Brian was a big loss to Gordon at work. He was someone Gordon could really trust. He felt almost totally isolated after Brian left. They were such close friends. They had been ever since he could remember.

He and Brian had been born in the same street. They'd been Christened and taken their first communion together at St. Thomas's church. They were always in the same class at school, the one next to the church, at the end of their street.

The main difference between them was that Gordon's father was dead and Brian's was a waster.

He'd confide in Gordon at playtime, "Same story! He came home drunk and started hitting my Mam. I butted in and I caught it instead."

Every morning, the pupils' hands, neck and footwear were inspected by a tyrannical teacher, slit-eyed, skinny Miss Jimpson. Woe betide anyone with dirty palms or a tide-mark around the neck.

Cleanliness was next to godliness and they'd better not forget it! She had a short stick which she wielded frequently to remind them.

Slow learners were her chief victims, but poor handwriting was the ultimate crime. Gordon was a natural left-hander but Miss Jackson had none of that. Everyone had to use their right-hand. Gordon was fortunate because somehow he managed to use his right hand without developing a stammer which some kids did.

He became ambidextrous and when he grew up, it was handy at work. Sometimes he spent days using a hammer. When one arm got tired he'd change to the other.

Brian was a full-time attender at school but Gordon's mother couldn't afford it. During his final years he was a 'half-dayer'. She sent him to school in the morning and he worked from the market, delivering groceries all afternoon.

Despite their poverty, Gordon was always turned-out smartly. Nan worked long hours at White Cross Mill.

Gordon had to sort himself and his younger brother ready for school. His mother always came back from the mill for them to have breakfast together at eight o'clock. By then, she'd already done two and a half hours work and her long day still stretched ahead.

Brian and Gordon were both bright lads and when they were fourteen, their mothers managed to gain them apprenticeships as roller-and-block cutters at Williamson's linoleum factory.

They, and the other lads in the street, were good friends and not much trouble to anyone. However, one day they were playing football. The ball went down Thurnham Street and hit a shop window. There was no damage but the shop-keeper reported them and they had to go to court. They were fined.

When the policeman, who had been obliged to take out proceedings against them heard this, he paid the fine himself, because he knew the boys' mothers. He knew that the lads came from respectable families. He'd been in the trenches with Nan's husband, Eli..

At the meetings, which Gordon went to regularly at Jack's house, these were the stories which the other people there liked to hear. Apart from Gordon, they'd all had a good education. There were three teachers, a solicitor and two quite prosperous businessmen in the group. Their beliefs came out of what they'd read or heard rather than how they'd lived.

Gordon was regarded, without being patronised, as something of a protege of Jack. For his part, Gordon was flattered when he held the floor and was listened to with real interest. They were fascinated by his descriptions of how it was at Williamsons.

He told them, how for several years they had been trying to form a union.

"Disgusting!" and "Disgraceful!" were the comments when he told them about Brian's unfair dismissal. Fair-haired, jovial, plump Brian, he of the broadest of broad Lancashire accents, had paid the price and lost his job. The foreman had told Brian his work was the poorest in the department and that as he had been late three times during the last twelve months, he was the one who had to go because they were over-staffed. The others knew it was all lies and a warning to the rest of them. The following week they employed two new young apprentices.The activists left in the department had to give up or proceed very carefully.

Jack's friends had contacts. They gave practical help and arranged for a national organiser to meet Gordon, and a few others from his department, in the Trades Hall one evening. This trades union big-wig told them how to go about things and win. At work, they began to make sensible plans, carefully canvassing their mates for support. It was no use tub-thumping.

There was a highly organised bosses' spy-system at Williamson's and it was hard to hide anything for long. Promotions often went to creeps who were only too willing to tell tales.

James Williamson had perfected this system and it had continued after his death. He hated unions.

Gordon had taken over where Brian had left off as chief unofficial organiser.He was fearful that he might be the next to be sacked. He didn't tell Margaret about this. She had enough to worry about looking after the two children all day. At least he had Jack to talk with twice a week.

"Things are changing," Jack said. "They'll need us all when war comes. You'll be allowed your union soon. You'll see!"

Every time Gordon met Jack his friend seemed to be more certain about another war being on the way. "Hitler and his friends are using Spain as a trial run. Mark my words!"

Gordon pondered what Jack said . He was an influential speaker and always convinced he was right. Jack would make a good politician, carrying conviction as he moved his ideas around on swings and roundabouts. "The time for action is near!" had replaced his, "We must never fight again!"

Gordon was being swayed. Jack loaned him books and pamphlets about what was going on in Spain. They made worrying reading. It did not seem fair that Britain's old enemy, Germany, should be helping the militarist general, Franco. Britain was standing by and letting democracy be beaten by the Fascists. Volunteers from many countries in Europe were going to Spain to help the democratically elected Republicans. No nation was oficially supporting them. The appeasers were feeding Hitler's fermenting ambitions.

Gordon watched Michael playing with his toys. He observed Gwyn, always happy and smiling back at him. He counted his blessings. He did not want their future to be threatened in any way. The last thing he wanted was war. And yet?

One good thing was that little Michael was nearly old enough for school. Margaret had seen Mr. Joy, the Headmaster of St. Anne's, and he'd agreed to take him after Christmas. It would not affect Gordon all that much but perhaps his wife would be more relaxed if she only had Gwyn to worry about during most of the day.

Before he went to bed, Gordon would look at the innocent faces of his sleeping children. It was hard to think that they were growing up in a world of increasing uncertainty. It seemed, as the months passed by, that big decisions were coming nearer, which would drastically affect the children's future. It was a worry for everyone and Gordon was a born worrier!