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.