Road to the Dales, The Story of a Yorkshire Lad

by Phinn, Gervase

  Later that evening I heard my mother discussing my unreasonable behaviour with Mrs Rogers, a neighbour who often called in for a cup of tea.

  'He'll grow out of it,' my mother told her. 'His two brothers went through that difficult stage. It comes with adolescence. It's just his hormones playing up.'

  'Well, Pat,' said Mrs Rogers. 'I'm glad there's no history of hormones in our family.'

  As with all disagreements in our family it eventually blew over and I learnt a lesson that we cannot always have in life what we want. Children need more than unconditional love. They need boundaries and parameters, otherwise they will never come to fully appreciate what they have and strive to earn their parents' love. When thwarted, children may very well argue and sulk and throw tantrums, and it is easier for parents to concede, to have a quiet life and preserve the domestic harmony rather than confront them with the word 'No', but I am certain that refusing children's unreasonable demands brings with it long-term rewards. After forty years in education I have seen only too clearly the results of inconsistency, lack of supervision and indulgence in the home. The rise in knife crime, teenage pregnancies, alcohol and drug abuse and antisocial behaviour has its roots in the permissive manner in which some children are reared.

  Of course there were times when I felt my mother was indeed unreasonable. When I was at college training to be a teacher we were set an essay on the novels of D. H. Lawrence and given the task of reading several of his books, including Sons and Lovers. At home for the weekend, I left the book in the front room but later, search as I might, I could not find it. Enquiring of my mother if she had seen it, she told me with pursed lips that it was in the dustbin and there it would stay.

  'You are not bringing dirty books into this house,' she said.

  'Mum!' I protested. 'I have to read it for my course.'

  'Well, you are not reading it in this house,' she told me firmly.

  'Anyway, it's not a dirty book,' I informed her.

  'It's by that man who wrote that book about the game-keeper.' She couldn't even bring herself to say the title: Lady Chatterley's Lover. The book stayed in the bin and when I was back at college, I bought another copy.

  When I was young, the facts of life were never a subject for discussion with my mother in any overt sense, but she skirted around the subject on occasions. I was twelve and we were sitting in the front room. Dad was at work, Christine at a dance class and my brothers were in town. My mother, darning socks in a casual manner, told the story of a young girl in Canklow, a dark and disadvantaged area of the industrial Don Valley. The girl, who was a few years older than I was, had become pregnant. Some lad had 'taken advantage of her' and she had now, as the girl's mother had told her angrily, 'got herself up the spout'. My mother, as the health visitor for the area, was given the case. I was surprised at my mother's blunt, matter-of-fact observations: 'It's not usually the ones who carry on with boys who end up becoming pregnant,' she told me. 'It's the naive ones.' She described this frail and frightened child, wearing her school blazer, eyes red with tears, trying to cope in a less than supportive family and facing what for her was a terrifying future. 'What will it feel like, nurse?' she asked. 'How long will it be before the baby is born? Will it hurt? What will happen to the baby?' The child would, of course, be adopted and the girl would, no doubt, carry the stigma of a bastard birth and be reminded frequently of it by her unsympathetic mother. Mum had seen this before. The girl would hold the baby in her arms, kiss it, love it, take it to her heart and not wish to part with it. The bond formed with her child when in her womb would be strengthened when she fed and cuddled it. Then she would be forced to give it away. Someone else would bring it up. All her life the girl would think about that child. 'It will be a torture,' said my mother. Then, looking up from the darning and staring at me, she added, 'And, of course, the boy who got her into all this trouble will get away scot-free.' I felt like saying, 'It wasn't me who got her pregnant, you know,' but I just nodded wisely. I knew what my mother meant.

  In the 1950s sex was seen as something of a secret, not a topic to be talked about. It was the subject of rude jokes and seaside postcards full of innuendo. In some comedy films, like the Carry On series, it was something cheeky and naughty, where the characters were full of winks and nods and knowing looks. By twelve I had a good idea where babies came from, but until I started secondary school and the big boys 'educated' me, I was pretty naive. Of course, like all boys, I bluffed. I was ten years old and wandering around Broom Valley Junior school yard one bright sunny lunchtime with Jimmy Everett and Terry Gaunt, my best pals, when Roy Evans sidled up.

  'Guess what?'

  'What?' we chorused.

  'My next door neighbour's lass, Soppy Sandra, is up t'spout!' There were many descriptions of pregnancy and Roy knew the whole dictionary of them - 'up the spout', 'in the pudding club', 'a bun in the oven', 'in the family way', 'up the duff', 'eating for two'.

  'Oh,' we replied, trying to sound uninterested.

  'S'right. There was a right old ding-dong last night when 'er old man found out. You should have 'eard 'em shouting. All t'street could 'ear. Soppy Sandra were rooaring 'er eyes out, 'er old man were blowing 'is top and 'er old woman were tellin' 'em both to shurrup cos all t'neighbours could 'ear. It were great.'

  'She should have been more careful,' said Terry, sounding like his father.

  Roy tried to impress us. 'You can't get pregnant, tha knows, if t'bloke 'as an 'ot shower before he does it.'

  'We know that!' snapped Jimmy, as ignorant as I was.

  'But you can if you swim too close to somebody at t'swimming baths and they pee in t'watter,' said Terry.

  'And if you put your tongue in their mouth when tha snoggin', that's a sure way,' Jimmy informed us, chancing his arm.

  'Or have a bath after somebody,' declared Roy confidently, not wishing to be outdone by the other two experts.

  'Who told thee that?' asked Terry, fascinated.

  'Our kid.' Roy winked. 'This buffer lass in t'cutlery section where he works 'ad twins after 'avin' a bath after t'lodger. He told me.' Roy then added, to give some authority to his brother's interesting information, 'He's cooartin', our Barry, tha knaws.'

  I had remained silent and then three pairs of eyes turned in my direction. 'Have you been told t'facts o' life then, Phinny?' asked Roy.

  'Course I have,' I lied, attempting to sound blase. 'My dad told me last year.'

  Dad never discussed anything of that sort. I am sure he would have been acutely embarrassed, as I certainly would have been. There was no sex education at school, nothing remotely sexual on the television, no books on the library shelves about 'the facts of life', and most parents shied away from broaching the subject, so we learnt in the playground from the supposed experts and heard many a fanciful story. My mother left a few medical books strategically placed about the house, perhaps hoping I would learn that way, but they were written in small cramped print and the contents were tediously detailed and uninteresting. I much preferred Biggles, who never ever got up to that sort of thing. He was too busy winning the war.

  School was, of course, no help at all in preparing us for the onset of adolescence. One morning after assembly we were shown a short black and white film about 'the birds and the bees'. It was literally about the birds and the bees and made no sense at all. All I recall was a man lying on his back in a corn-field and the wind dispersing the seeds of a dandelion clock as he stared into a clear sky. The symbolism was completely lost on me. Nowadays, of course, schools have sex education built into the curriculum and very little is left to the imagination. I recall once sitting in on a sex education lesson in a primary school. The visiting expert gave a very graphic account, illustrated with an animated film, of where babies came from to a hall of very attentive children. At the end he asked for questions. A boy at the back, a cheeky-faced little individual, the one you might predict would ask the difficult or embarrassing question, raised his hand. I saw the teachers give ea
ch other a look that said, 'I might have guessed it would be him.'

  'Yes, young man?' asked the visiting expert cheerfully. 'What would you like to know?'

  'Will we still be having rounders this afternoon?' asked the child.

  It strikes me as very strange now that my mother - a midwife - never discussed such things with me but was prepared to let me find out for myself. We talked about many, many things around the kitchen table but there were certain things she must have felt were unsuitable. After her death in 1979 strangers would stop me in the street to offer their condolences and tell me stories about Nurse Phinn, how she had delivered a baby in the upstairs room of a public house, how she had saved the life of a toddler who was choking on a chip, how she had rushed round to a neighbour's house when a distraught father sought her help for his daughter who had been badly scalded, how she had reassured a worried parent after their baby had been circumcised. I learnt from a headteacher that she had toured schools to give talks to schoolgirls about 'the time of the month'. But she never told me anything about growing up and the changes of adolescence.

  My earliest memory of my mother was sitting at the kitchen table making gingerbread men. The gingerbread men in the Grafton's Bakery in Rotherham all looked exactly alike and formed from a template. Mine were individuals. Some had large ears, others long noses, some were small, others fat and squat and some had long thin legs and spidery arms. I remember stirring the light brown mixture and then forming the figures, pressing in the currants for the eyes and nipples and tummy buttons. With a large wooden spoon I would scrape out the bowl as I waited for the gingerbread men to cook. When they came out of the oven I would line them up like soldiers. I was always loath to eat them. Mum would chant:

  Run, run as fast as you can,

  You can't catch me,

  I'm the Gingerbread Man!

  Periodically she would have a big bread bake. I would help mix the flour and milk and yeast, then knead the dough in a large bowl before it was placed before the open fire in the living room with a damp teacloth over the top and left for the mixture to rise. I loved the bread, soft and warm with melted butter on the top. When I smell the aroma of baking bread I think of my mother.

  She was not a great cook and her dishes were never fancy. Casseroles and chops with mashed potatoes and tinned garden peas or carrots, rissoles, shepherd's pie, egg and chips, minced beef - this was our staple diet. Scrag-end and brisket were popular, and many people, like my father, liked plenty of fat on the meat. The main course was followed by a pudding or a crumble. Rice puddings were my favourite. My mother would put a pint of milk in a metal dish with sugar and suet and sprinkle nutmeg on the top. I loved the brown skin that formed on the top and was usually the one who scraped out the tin afterwards.

  On Sunday it was a small roast joint augmented by mashed and roast potatoes, cabbage, carrots and parsnips, all covered in thick gravy. Before we tucked into the joint, however, there was Yorkshire pudding and onion gravy. A thick slab of Yorkshire pudding was always consumed before the meal to fill us up, and could also be eaten at the end with treacle drizzled on top as an alternative to dessert. For Sunday tea there was a selection of sandwiches - Shippam's fish paste, egg and cheese, potted meat, Marmite and sandwich spread, the last and my least favourite consisting of chopped-up vegetables in a sticky mayonnaise, a concoction closely resembling vomit. The second course was always Wagon Wheels (large round chocolate-covered marshmallow biscuits), scones with jam and a trifle. Sometimes a tin of peaches in sweet, sticky juice would be served and covered in Carnation milk. My father would sit with a large napkin tucked into his shirt front and after the repast would announce he had had 'an excellent sufficiency'.

  Mealtimes were important occasions in our house. We children took it in turns to set the table and we were responsible for clearing away and washing 'the pots' afterwards. We would never sit, as many youngsters do today, in front of a television set with our dinner on our knees but shared a family meal together when we would talk, say what we had been doing that day, relate anecdotes, tell jokes and air our opinions. Sometimes they were lively affairs when we argued and disagreed, but if voices were raised, my mother would promptly put a stop to it with 'That'll do!' It is not nostalgia to say that we have lost something with the demise of the family meal. When as a family we cease to interact over a shared meal, come together at the table and talk, we cease to enrich each other's lives, to articulate needs, share feelings and ideas, stimulate, inspire and support each other.

  Mum trained at Blackburn Royal Infirmary from 1928 to 1931 as a state registered nurse. She did well in her examinations and left with a sparkling reference from the Matron, a Miss Gibbon, who described Nurse Mullarkey SRN as 'highly efficient, conscientious and loyal'. By the time I arrived on the scene she had added various other nursing qualifications to her name; she had become a state certified midwife and been promoted from school nurse to health visitor, touring homes in a deprived part of Rotherham. Canklow, her 'patch', was an area of endemic poverty, of densely packed rows of mean, back-to-back, redbrick terraces.

  Very often I would search through my toy cupboard for a Dinky toy or a lead soldier, for a ball or a game, only to be told by Mum: 'It's gone to Canklow.' It was the same with clothes. My brother Michael would ask where a particular tie had gone, or Alec would comment on the disappearance of his favourite shirt, to receive the predictable reply: 'It's gone to Canklow.' Soon we became so used to hearing the familiar phrase that Mum would start: 'It's ...' and we would all chorus: 'Gone to Canklow.'

  In the airing cupboard my mother kept a pile of clean new vests and underpants of various sizes, neatly folded and kept at the back. These were the 'Canklow undies' which, over the winter, she would take for the children on her patch. Some children, she told me, were sewn into their vests for the winter and arrived at the clinic dirty, smelly and verminous. She always sent them away clean, disinfected and with a new vest and underpants. 'It's the least I can do,' she told us.

  At tea my mother would tell us stories about her visits on the Canklow estate. One stays in my mind. It was of a young man, the eldest of six, who worked as a bellhop at one of Sheffield's top hotels. The house was dark and dirty and the father, a 'ne'er-do-well', as Mum described him, would slouch in front of the fire smoking and grunting. The internal doors of the house had been replaced by the council so many times they probably lost count, because when the inhabitants had run out of coal, anything which would burn was chopped up and put on the fire. Three or four scraggly-looking chickens clucked away in a pen in the back yard surrounded by piles of rubbish. Mum would call to see the new baby to find the young man carefully pressing his uniform. He looked as if he had scrubbed himself with wire wool, for his face shone as red as a polished apple. He was always cheerful and whistling as he ironed. The white gloves, the polished shoes, the red belt with the silver buckle, the pillbox hat were arranged on the table. Each day he would catch the bus to the city and at the end of the week would hand over his wages and tips to support the family.

  'He'll go far, that young man,' Mum told us. She didn't need to spell it out. We were made to feel very privileged.

  6

  The bane of my mother's life when she visited the houses in Canklow were the dogs. She always assumed the worst in any canine until, in later life, she acquired one of her own. As someone who had been bitten by a savage little terrier early on in her career as a health visitor and still carried the scar on her ankle, she assumed they were 'up to no good' when they came trotting down the path madly wagging their tails, and she was deeply suspicious of the owner's predictable claim that the creature was 'only playing'. My mother would come home with graphic tales of these huge and ferocious beasts guarding the gates of the houses. The dogs were trained, or so she said, to attack anyone in a uniform or a dark suit; police officers, electricity meter readers, rent men and bailiffs were especial objects of attack and never got through the front gate or, if they did, very soon departed at g
reat speed with the dog snapping at their heels.

  My mother in her dark blue health visitor's coat and brown leather case was an obvious target for dangerous dogs. When the inhabitant of a particular house, with its trained canine sentinel standing at the gate, saw it wasn't an unwelcome visitor, he would shout an order to the snarling cur, which would then obediently flop down and let my mother pass. Then a disembodied voice from the direction of the house would shout, 'It's all reet, nurse, it'll not 'urt thee. It's as daft as a brush.' I guess my mother smiled nervously at the inappropriateness of that simile. My mother always carried a substantial leather bag, which she was adept at wielding like a weapon, and a large pepperpot, just in case of an attack, and on more than one occasion she had had recourse to use them both in warding off a vicious guard dog.

  Once a particularly vicious beast called Major, a huge redhaired mongrel, attacked a small girl while my mother was visiting the area, seizing its victim by the leg until the child's mother warded it off with a broom handle. The angry mother carried the distressed child to Nurse Phinn for first aid, saying she had told the police umpteen times about the dog but they had done nothing about it.

  'T'police never like coming down to Canklow, you know, nurse,' she observed. This came as no surprise to my mother.

  On her way back to Ferham Clinic that afternoon my mother called into the police station and laid it on thick, saying that the child could have been savaged to death by this rabid dog and that something had to be done urgently. She would be reporting the incident to the Chief Medical Officer. As a result of my mother's intervention and her great gift for storytelling, the owner of the dog was summonsed and told to take the beast to the vet to have it 'put down', otherwise there would be a substantial fine. The authorities would pay a visit in the near future to make sure he had complied with the order.