Honour of the Line Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 – Temporary Refuge

  Chapter 2 – Kids for a Quid

  Chapter 3 – Legend of Honour

  Chapter 4 – A Right Little Sod

  Chapter 5 – Babies from Stations

  Chapter 6 – Bad Loser

  Chapter 7 – Sporting Beginnings

  Chapter 8 – Mine Host Retires

  Chapter 9 – Play Me a Song

  Chapter 10 – Changes

  Chapter 11 – Here Comes Summer

  Chapter 12 – Can I Come Along?

  Chapter 13 -First Date Nerves

  Chapter 14 – Let’s Do It Again

  Chapter 15 – Taking Chances

  Chapter 16 – Mystery Man

  Chapter 17 – Growing Up too Fast

  Chapter 18 – The Promised Land

  Chapter 19 – Mouth Almighty

  Chapter 20 – Oh Dear!

  Chapter 21 – Emotional Hell

  Chapter 22 – Meet My Sister

  Chapter 23 – Meet Me by the Car Park

  Chapter 24 – The Train at Platform 2

  Chapter 25 – Tiddler in the Ocean

  Chapter 26 – 2 to 1 the Field

  Chapter 27 – Commando Custard

  Chapter 28 – Double Gin and Tonic – No Way!

  Chapter 29 – Bully Boy

  Chapter 30 – Sour Revenge

  Chapter 31 – First the Good News!

  Chapter 32 – The Saddest Day

  Chapter 33 – Older Women

  Chapter 34 – Swearing Under Oath

  Chapter 35 – Friday Night’s Going to be Alright

  Chapter 36 – Silent Bells and Shotguns

  Chapter 37 – Leeks and Daffodils

  Chapter 38 – Promises Kept

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Honour of the Line is dedicated to

  all abandoned children throughout the world

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Mr Weeks, my English teacher from my Secondary School, which I attended in 1962-64. He encouraged me by saying that I had the ability to write good stories.

  I would have been unable to write this book without the massive support of my wife Lynne who, not only encouraged me to pick up a pen but who also typed the manuscript.

  I would also like to thank my friend Steve Gale for designing the front cover and would like to credit Clare Bloomfield for the eyes on the front cover.

  Foreword

  In 1950 I was an abandoned child who was adopted into a very working class family environment, which has given me the inspiration to write this story.

  Introduction

  This is a story of an abandoned child’s infant and turbulent teenage years. From adoption, to sport, a close friendship with his teacher, teenage sex and being detained in custody. Emotions and morals run strong during this story of love, heartbreak, fatherhood and the complicated feelings for two sisters. This is a story of working class morals.

  CHAPTER 1

  Temporary Refuge

  The official records show that I was born on the 4th August 1950 and my birth place was unknown. At around 6.30 in the morning I was found abandoned on the steps of a home cum institute which still had undertones of the antiquated workhouse system.

  It’s location was around 25 miles South of London, just north of a very working class town and close to the main railway route to the South Coast. Locally it was still known as The Workhouse but it’s official name was St Jude’s.

  The building was massive and very grand from the front with large gardens and a chapel to the right of the main structure. However, if you ventured to the back the realities became only too obvious. There were long stable like blocks where the homeless were housed and families living there were required to work free of charge as either cleaners, carers or kitchen staff for the privilege. These blocks were divided into small rooms with a hanging light and usually an old worn out spring bed. At the end of the block was the kitchen which had a sink with only cold water for all to share, plus two gas cookers and all of this for thirty to forty families to cook with. There were two toilets, which were always bereft of paper and a clothes line in the yard.

  The main building served as a cross between a care home and a hospice, basically somewhere for the old and frail to spend their last weeks. If an elderly neighbour was unwell and taken by ambulance to St Jude’s, invariably you would hear of their death before too long.

  In the latter years of my childhood I would be destined to spend quite a lot of time visiting school friends who lived in the homeless quarters. By this time it was normally frequented by young mothers who had got themselves in ‘the family way’. Another reason I became familiar with this part of town was owing to St Jude’s proximity to the railway line and my fascination for trains. I used to love standing on the footbridge which led to the rear of St Jude’s, especially when steam trains passed underneath and I got covered in smoke and soot. In latter years most boys from my area became train spotters.

  During my excursions back to St Jude’s I became only too aware of the appalling conditions in which families were forced to live. Indeed, one of my best friends, who was the product of a French/Canadian, lived there with his mother, four sisters and a brother. He never looked well and always seemed to be suffering from one ailment or another.

  On the 7th September 1950 my time at St Jude’s had been duly served and I was off to pastures new where the grass was much greener.

  St Jude’s finally closed in 1965 but the building stood derelict for a number of years before eventually being demolished. The magnificent clock on the main tower was fully restored and is now proudly in place outside of the new modern shopping precinct in the centre of town. There is also a small museum about the history of St Jude’s. One of the scripts in the museum reads ‘St Jude’s was a place for the sick and feeble to die in comfort and also a haven for homeless families and a dumping ground for unwanted bastards’.

  What is not noted in the museum was the atrocious conditions people of that time had to endure. Hunger, lack of hygiene, inadequate sanitation and, for the great majority, no real future. Most of the children grew up to be poorly educated with little prospects and many turned to petty crime.

  People nowadays still refer to the area as ‘the old Workhouse’, but it is now full of modern swish apartments where commuters live and the prices are sky high owing to the proximity to the main line railway station giving access to London and the major airports, a far cry from the darkest days just after the war.

  Throughout my life I have always been really grateful that I was taken in and cared for during the first month of my life and at school I always had a real soft spot for those other kids who sadly weren’t rescued as I was, but I suppose they at least had one parent.

  The traumas of my very early days were never a problem to me but have started to play with my brain as the years pass by.

  CHAPTER 2

  Kids for a Quid

  Whilst I was still too young to remember a couple from the town named Joan and Jim were busy trying to find a baby to adopt. They were not able to produce children of their own and were told it was easy to adopt young babies from the Workhouse.

  Those days, the rules on adoption were almost non existent, although prospective parents did eventually have to attend court to make the bond legal. I was led to believe that a couple were able to simply fill in a form after proving their identification and would be given a child for a trial period. However, if they donated £1 they could get to choose from the dozen or so who were always needing homes. I suppose it resembled a modern day resc
ue centre for unwanted cats and dogs, although animal rescues usually do a home check first.

  On that wonderful day in 1950 I was the lucky one they chose and they officially adopted me on the 16th January 1951. At the Workhouse I had been named Ken but my new Mum and Dad named me Billy. On the 25th March 1951 I was christened William Samuel McFirley at our local church St Luke’s. I still possess a photo of my Christening, it looked bitterly cold and my Dad is holding one hand behind his back on the church steps, hiding a cigarette no doubt.

  My new parents had met at the start of the War. My Mum worked in the N.A.A.F.I. and Dad was doing his initial basic training before being sent to the Middle East. He never spoke about the War and always said that those that boasted were false. He said that real soldiers knew them as Skin Back Fusiliers!

  Mum had been born in our home town Colwood. Her mother had died whilst giving birth to her and so she was brought up by just her Dad (my new Grandad) and his sister who lived just up the street.

  Grandad worked on the building doing plastering and was a master of his trade. Dad had left the Army after the War and was a coal man, we always had plenty of coal. Mum was a part-time butcher, a trade she had learned after being called up. Whereas Mum and Grandad were locals my Dad came from South London. His mum, a dressmaker by trade, was a Bristolian and his late Father came from Argyll in Scotland, hence my surname McFirley. It was fitting that my Dad served in the Scottish Regiment during the War. He was very proud to have been a Kings Own Scottish Borderer and his Glengarry was his most prized possession from those times. It is still in the family to this day. Dad was, to put it mildly, an honest rogue. He prided himself on being the Robin Hood of his time, being able to rob the rich and feed the poor. In my early days food was in very short supply but we always had fresh meat in abundance and I assume all the local businessmen did as we received many good turns from them.

  Once every late Spring, the Undertaker would turn up in the hearse and deliver off-cuts from coffins for us to use as bean sticks. I remember him saying to my Grandad ‘“Frank, you have good kids, we all look out for each other”.

  We all lived in Grandad’s rented house where his Mother had raised 12 children and had her husband not have been killed at the Somme in 1916 I feel sure there would have been many many more. It was a three bedroomed semi and we lived in the front room and Grandad lived in the back, but I was to have the best of both worlds, because I spent hours with him playing, he always had time for me when I was growing up. I suppose I was the son he had probably longed for. We had a shared scullery which had a sink with a cold water tap and an old fashioned gas cooker and the added luxury of a gas copper to do the weekly wash. In the back yard was a coal shed, outside toilet, a mangle for the washing and a tin bath hanging from a nail on the wall. All water had to be heated up, either on the kitchen range in Grandad’s room or on the gas stove. Needless to say the kitchen was always full of steam, necessitating the back door to be forever open. It was always freezing. We had quite a large rear garden which was used for growing vegetables and there was also a large rough grass area for us to play on.

  The area in which we lived was known locally as ‘Between the Arches’, as it was a big town and the railway split just to the south of the town station. Between the Arches was effectively an area shaped like a triangle, narrow at it’s northern extremity and far wider at the south. The railway engine sheds were between the arches, as were the gas works and access to our close knit community was by going under one of the six arches which separated us from the rest of town.

  Most of the houses were privately owned and rented out to tenants, although a couple of the streets were council owned and very dated with outside toilets and no bathroom. It took until 1963 for the houses to get an extension whereby toilets and bathrooms were added.

  Many of my best friends lived in these council houses. The local school was just up the road from us. Children went there from five to seven years of age and returned again from twelve to fifteen, which was the school leaving age of that time. The intermediate school years were spent at another school on the far side of town, where us lot from the Arches felt complete strangers. In all but the council streets there were various shops. Everything you could possibly think of, from grocers to a wet fish shop and even a cobblers where people took their worn out shoes to be re-soled or re-heeled. A certain Mr Hagger was the barber and even as a young child I recall him being referred to as ‘Hagger the Shagger’, which looking back seemed rather unfair as he was a really decent ‘salt of the earth’ kind of bloke. The greengrocer, a certain Mr Taylor, was always known as ‘Tinker’, and the builder, W C Brown and Sons, was always known as ‘Shithouse Brown’ by all and sundry. Many people had nicknames but our family seemed to avoid any, or perhaps they were just used out of our earshot.

  CHAPTER 3

  Legend of Honour

  The Arches boasted just the one pub. It was the watering hole for most of the men and if a lady went in there she would always be escorted by a man and taken into the lounge bar where drinks were around a penny a pint more expensive, supposedly for the relaxed atmosphere and more comfortable surroundings. This bar was really quite unappealing, in fact, pretty dire, so it takes little imagination as to the state of the public bar which was only frequented by the working men of the area. This was a bar where men would go straight from work in their filthy working clothes and dirty boots. Visitors and families of the locals were always made very welcome but strangers, in general, were not. It took a brave man to set foot inside and occasionally, if one were bold enough, they very rarely made a second visit.

  The pub was named Honour of the Line and it was supposedly the only pub in the world which carried that particular name, although the fact was never verified. The building dated back to 1840 and must have been quite grand in it’s heyday. However, by the 1950’s it was really shabby and in desperate need of some love and attention. On the wall of the public bar was a scroll which defined how the pub was named. It stated that as the area of between the Arches grew and grew the people of the area regarded themselves as the lesser people of the town, every man was a ‘hands on’ worker, where other areas in general housed the more affluent.

  The population of the Arches decided to adopt their own code of conduct, it was a bit like Scouts Honour. It you shook hands and agreed to the Honour of the Line it was forever binding and, if agreeing to this bond, it was a rule that at least two independent witnesses were present. Very few people took this oath as it was usually only agreed on a matter of grave concern. No matter what your religion this oath superseded all other oaths for the people of the Arches.

  The pub was the centre of most that went on, rather like the Rovers in Corrie or the Queen Vic in EastEnders. Darts, bar billiards, crib, shove halfpenny, you name it, they had a team in every league. Needless to say, all visiting teams received a very warm welcome and always seemed to relish going behind enemy lines, so as to speak. On Saturday lunch times it was heaving as the men finished work for the week and had a pint or two before going off to watch the town football team, who during the late 50’s, were one of the top amateur sides in the country. Around 6 o’clock the bar gradually started to fill again with all the usual banter that, to this day, still goes hand in hand with football. Almost, without exception, the men would think they could have done much better than the team, especially if the team were to lose.

  Sadly, most of the pub’s customers had beer bellies and smoked heavily and as the pints disappeared their imagination as to their own talents increased. Indeed, some would start of by stating how bad the team had played and by closing time they would have you believing that they had been the Pele of their generation.

  For all the rubbish which was all too frequently spoken there were seldom cross words exchanged. It was the most friendly of potentially hostile places, if that makes sense?

  Paddy was the Landlord of the time and his wife was called May. He resembled an ex RAF Officer with his moustache and
elegant wavy blonde hair. He always looked really smart but the only part of his dress to ever change was his bow tie. He wore a different colour for every day of the week. He always wore a light brown suit which would surely have fallen to bits if it were cleaned, although it somehow, by a minor miracle, always looked fresh. May was a typical publicans wife of the time, great with the customers but when Paddy held court she knew her place.

  Despite his Irish sounding name Paddy had moved to the area from Salisbury in 1948 and had become the focal point at the hub of the community. May had been married to the shop-keeper of the local tobacconist and Confectioners but they were divorced after her and Paddy had a fling. He could have charmed the pants off Ena Sharples.

  Unlike the pubs of today, many of which resemble restaurants, the only food on offer were cheese or ham rolls at lunchtimes, or stale crisps during the evenings. According to my Grandad, Paddy’s rolls could be used for weapons of war. He said you could bash the enemy into submission with them as they were always dry and hard. This was quite probably due to the fact that they were kept on the bar under a clear plastic cover for several hours. It was always hot and smoky in the bar so it was hardly surprising that the rolls were, to say the least, past their prime.

  Although I was far too young to ever cross the boundary to the haven of the local men, unbeknown to me, events in that pub would one day change my life forever.

  CHAPTER 4

  A Right Little Sod

  My earliest memories began when I was around 4 years old. I remember sitting in the back room with Grandad lining up toy soldiers on the table to make a marching band. The soldiers were ‘hand me downs’ made of lead and many had become beheaded over the years and the heads were then loosely joined to the body by matchsticks. I had more toys than most of my friends mainly because my Grandad really spoiled me. I still remember him getting me a second hand three wheeled bike with a carrier on the back which resembled a bread bin. Mum and Dad decided it needed painting before I could use it and it seemed to take a lifetime for Dad to complete the painting. For some reason I imagined it would only take a few moments to paint but Mum and Dad seemed to be rubbing it down forever and applied coat upon coat of paint. When it was finished it looked fantastic, it was painted in maroon and cream, just like some of the railway carriages which used to pass across the arches near where we lived. Thank the Lord they never had the job of painting the Forth Bridge.