Self-preservation will always take the upper hand in desperate moments.

Chapter Five: The Green & Pleasant Land

Mum didn’t set out to abandon my father for another man. But The Great Depression forced many in the working class, including my mother, to do things outside of their character to survive. Love cannot be nourished on an empty stomach.

Daily in our doss, I saw how people betrayed one another for a morsel of food  in the 1930s. It was no different with my family because hunger gnawed at the bonds that held us together. Self-preservation will always take the upper hand in desperate moments.

In the winter of 1930, Mum knew our Dad was a dead weight. His work injury left him unemployable and made him a liability to our ability to weather the economic storms ahead.. My mother believed Dad would drown us all if he was not jettisoned from our lives. In that era, my mother's only hope to ensure her children didn't starve was to find another man capable of earning his scratch. The problem was Mum was as bad at picking men as my uncle was at picking winning horses.

It was rotten luck that my mother crashed into the orbit of a handsome, quick-talking Irish navvy named O’Sullivan when he arrived as a lodger at our doss house.  Maybe if he had chosen another place to kip, my father’s fate would have been kinder that what happened to him with a year of O’Sullivan meeting my mother.

This navvy wooed Mum into his bed with compliments, jokes, flirtation and the cruellest trick of all the promise of a better tomorrow.

O'Sullivan carried himself like a soldier and was sure of himself. The economic crash hadn’t stolen his sense of self-worth. Confidence was- an aphrodisiac for Mum, who had lost hers after too many midnight flits.

O’Sullivan made Mum smile and laugh, and despite my early age, I knew she liked him more than she should. Sometimes, she didn’t come back to sleep in our room at night, and there were whispers from other lodgers about the sin of fornication.

For Mum, O’Sullivan’s attentions were like a life preserver thrown to a drowning person. She reciprocated his affections and longed to be with him. She resented the time spent in my father's company and became more acerbic and cruel to him.

Nightly under the spluttering glow of our one gas light that was bolted onto a greasy wall, Mum cursed Dad for leading her into a life of harsh poverty. Dad did not fight back but instead apologised for his age, infirmities and the things that were not his fault.

Dad saying sorry was not enough for my mother. She resented my father because she was the one who begged, borrowed, and stole to ensure that my sister and I had some morsel of food for our tea each night. Mum was the one who went to charity shops and pleaded for clothing for me and Alberta.

Mum was the one who obtained for me the worn corduroy trousers that were stained with the piss from its former owner at the St Vincent De Paul mission.

“I am the one who eats the shit for thee,” was Mum's response if anyone dared to question any of her decisions that affected our family.

Falling in love with O'Sullivan allowed my mother to escape the harsh reality of the world we lived in. But it was more fantasy than fact.

My mother deluded herself into believing a new life could be at hand for her and her kids with this attractive young workman who promised her a life of plenty down south. She ignored the reality she was already married to my father, who, although disabled, was very much alive.

In the 1930s, working-class women rarely obtained a divorce because of the cost and the moral hypocrisy of that era. Facts, however, didn’t stop my mum, and she did all that she could to make herself become more than a fling to O’Sullivan.

Although she went about it most peculiarly because her Irish lover didn’t seem to my childish eyes to be a man of any faith, save for that of self-preservation and taking, damn the consequences, what he could from others.

It got into Mum’s head that if her children were the religion of her lover, it might be easier to pass us all off as a family unit. My mother was plotting ahead and reasoned that my dad could be abandoned- while she, Alberta and I would live with O’Sullivan outside of Yorkshire.

To aid in this fiction, my mother had me and my sister converted to Catholicism whilst she a sinner, stayed far away from any confessional.

Yet it was not just lust that drove my mum to embrace the Church of Rome. Mum had heard that the catholic church in Bradford provided better food parcels than the Church of England.

I remember my first day at that catholic school and being terrified by the priests whose faces were whisky-red from too many nights of cards and cigarettes. I soon learned it was not the priests you should fear but the nuns who taught me my catechism.

Sister Christine was the nun I learned to fear more than anything else because she seemed charged by God himself to deliver his wrath against me. Sister Christine was a dour, unhappy character who took no joy in beauty or children.

One day at school, the Sister instructed our class to draw an apple that sat on a table. Like a creeping Jesus, the Sister moved around the room on rubber-soled shoes to inspect the drawing prowess of each student as if she were a judge at an art competition.

When Sister Christine came and inspected my drawing of the apple, she was not pleased. The nun said with disgust. It was sloppy, smudged an insult to her and God. Not satisfied with verbal barbs, the Sister so outraged by my drawing, struck me with a strap across my forehead. The strength and ferocity of the blow made me black out for a moment. When I came to, I wept in pain, fear, and humiliation. 

My mother noticed upon my return from school the bruised whelp on my forehead. She asked how it happened and I told her the mark was from Sister Christine hitting me.

It outraged Mum that a stranger dared to physically punish a child of hers. The following morning, my mother went to school with me to exact retribution from Sister Christine.

“I hear you’ve been disciplining our Harry for not meeting your fancy apple approval.” Sister Christine obfuscated and claimed I had been acting out in class.

“Sister, mark my words, touch my boy again; I will beat you black and blue with my very hands.”

Upon leaving, my mother said to the nun, whose mouth was agape in surprise and fear, “Justice is mine sayeth the lord.”

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