The Girl in the Spotty Dress--Memories From the 1950s and the Photo That Changed My Life

by Pat Stewart

  With no school to go to, I packed up Peter and Stephen on the train and travelled to Swansea to watch Johnny perform in the show. He seemed baffled when he saw us arrive at the stage door, so I told him all about the school having no room.

  ‘But he’s five. He needs to be in school,’ Johnny reasoned.

  ‘I know, but she was adamant she wouldn’t take him, so there’s nothing we can do or say that will change her mind.’

  Later that evening, following the performance, Johnny and I returned to his hotel. As we walked into the reception area, we bumped into an old friend of ours who had risen through the ranks to become an MP for Swansea.

  ‘Pat!’ he said, holding his arms out in greeting. ‘How lovely to see you and you’re with your boys too!’

  He bent down a little so that he could shake Peter’s hand.

  ‘So tell me, young man. How old are you these days?’

  Peter blinked up at him.

  ‘I’m five,’ he replied.

  The MP straightened up and looked over at me a little baffled.

  ‘If he’s five years old, he really should be in school.’

  I wrapped an arm around Peter.

  ‘I know,’ I said, and I explained my predicament with the school and the headmistress.

  ‘But that’s outrageous!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he suggested. ‘I could raise it in the House of Commons if you’d like.’

  My face broke into a huge smile.

  ‘Oh, would you? That would be wonderful!’

  A few days later, he did indeed raise the question in the House of Commons. The press heard about it, and soon we had the Western Mail knocking on our door wanting a photograph of Johnny and Peter. A journalist asked us some questions and Peter and Johnny made the paper. I didn’t think much more about it, but it turned out our timing had been impeccable. I hadn’t realised, but there was a general election coming up. A week or so after the story had run, I was elbow deep in washing some clothes in the sink when I heard a knock at the door. I answered it to find James Callaghan standing on my doorstep. At that time, Callaghan was the MP for Cardiff.

  ‘Can I come in, Mrs Stewart?’ he asked politely.

  I was a little taken aback but I invited him in all the same. I offered him tea or whisky. He accepted a glass of whisky, so I cracked open Johnny’s best bottle.

  ‘It’s about your son, Peter, and the school’s refusal to take him,’ he began.

  I nodded and poured him a large glass.

  ‘Yes. My son is awfully upset about it,’ I replied as I explained what the headmistress had said.

  ‘Well, I hope that I may be able to help you there.’

  After Jim Callaghan had left, I realised it was an opportunity for free publicity, so I rang up the Western Mail journalist, who’d called at our house the week before.

  ‘You’ll never guess who knocked at my door today,’ I said, telling him all about Jim Callaghan’s promise to sort out Peter’s education.

  Of course, the reporter was all ears and the newspaper ran the story in full. Less than a week later, a letter landed on the doormat at home. I smiled as I opened it up. It was from the headmistress. She’d written to tell me she’d changed her mind about how full her school was. There was space for Peter and the two other children after all.

  ‘Great!’ Johnny said as I relayed the good news.

  ‘Well, it is and it isn’t,’ I remarked.

  ‘Eh?’ Johnny said shaking his head.

  ‘The thing is, because I’ve kicked up such a big stink, I’m worried the headmistress will see us and Peter as troublemakers. And I don’t want Peter Stewart to be the name on every teacher’s lips for the wrong reason.’

  ‘So you don’t think we should send him to school?’ Johnny said, settling back down in his chair.

  ‘No, it’s not that. I think he should definitely go to school – just not that one.’

  In the end, we decided to enrol Peter at a Welsh-speaking school in Cardiff.

  ‘I’d like my boys to be able to speak Welsh, just like their father. Besides, if they end up on the stage, they’ll have another string to their bow.’

  Peter’s new school was the other side of Cardiff, so he boarded a bus every day. It was a private school, but the bus had been laid on by the council to transport pupils to the only Welsh-speaking school in the city. As he climbed on board, I couldn’t help but smile. Seeing him reminded me of all the bus journeys I’d made to Leeds with Mam so I could become a dancer. She’d done everything to give me a better start in life, and now it was my turn to do the same for my son.

  However, Stephen wasn’t quite as keen to go or even spend a day at his Welsh-speaking nursery. Instead, he’d kick up an almighty fuss every time I tried to leave the room. In the end, the nursery decided it would be best if it gave me a temporary job as ‘orange juice lady’, at least until he’d settled.

  I decided that, if my boys were going to learn to speak Welsh, so should I. I began by taking a twelve-week course with a private tutor, who brought me up to O-Level standard. I wanted to be able to understand enough of the language that I could help my sons read the books they brought home.

  With my orange-juice-lady role finally at an end and both boys in school, my agency continued to flourish.

  The following summer, Johnny was asked to go to Clacton to do a season at Butlin’s. The local council had decided to put on a gala, with decorated floats to raise money for the town’s chosen charities, and Butlin’s had wanted to get involved. It was the summer holidays, so the boys and I travelled down to spend time with Johnny. As usual, he’d thrown himself into proceedings and had helped organise a float for the parade.

  ‘I thought Stephen and Peter could stand on it. We could dress them up,’ Johnny suggested.

  ‘But we don’t have any costumes. What will we dress them up as?’

  He thought for a moment and remembered a pair of old boxing gloves he’d spotted backstage.

  ‘Boxers! They can go as boxers. Peter could be Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and Stephen could be Brian London, the heavyweight British boxing champion.’

  I knew that, once Johnny had a good idea in his head, there was very little I could do to change his mind. He dressed both boys up in shorts before tying a 16-oz boxing glove onto each of their hands. The gloves looked absolutely huge on their four- and five-year-old arms. I stifled a laugh as soon as I saw them.

  ‘Those gloves look enormous on them!’ I said, smirking.

  Johnny explained that was the point.

  ‘It’ll make people laugh.’

  An hour or so later, the floats had lined up to sail through streets packed with the good people of Clacton. They’d turned out in their droves just to cheer them on, throwing coins onto each float as they passed by.

  Mam had come to stay, so together we rented a bungalow just outside the town centre. After the parade had finished, Mam and I took the boys home so that we could bath them and put them to bed.

  ‘You sort Peter out while I see to Stephen,’ I called from the front room.

  ‘All right. Come ’ere, sunshine,’ Mam said, grabbing Peter by the boxing glove. She led him through into the bathroom and started to run a bath.

  Moments later, I heard a shriek and then Mam called out, ‘Pat, come ’ere quick!’

  Panicked by her voice, I flew into the bathroom, where I found her kneeling down next to a red-faced Peter. Both of them were surrounded by hundreds of copper pennies scattered across tiles on the bathroom floor.

  ‘What the—’ I gasped.

  ‘It’s ’im,’ Mam said, pointing a disapproving finger at Peter. ‘I’ve just taken his glove off and this is what came flying out,’ she said, looking down at the coins on the floor. ‘He must ’ave had it hidden in there the whole time,’ she said, holding up an empty boxing glove.

  ‘But where’s it all from?’

  I walked over to Peter, knelt down and held his shoulders in both h
ands to try to make him look at me. ‘Peter, you must tell me where you got all this money from, otherwise I will be very cross.’

  Peter shrugged his shoulders and cast his eyes downwards.

  ‘The float,’ he finally whispered. ‘I picked it up from the float.’

  Mam put a hand to her heart as though she’d been struck by lightning.

  ‘Oh, my Lord,’ she gasped, as though Peter was one of the Great Train Robbers!

  ‘Right!’ I snapped, ‘that’s it! What you’ve done is wrong, Peter. Do you understand? That money was meant for charity, not for you. We will have to gather it all up, put it in a bag and take it back to where it belongs.’

  Peter looked up at me, desperately trying to blink back tears.

  ‘You won’t tell Dad, will you?’ he begged.

  ‘Of course I will! You’ll have to take it back to the manager at Butlin’s and you’ll have to say sorry.’

  Peter’s body slumped as he absorbed the enormity of the situation.

  ‘He’s done what?’ Johnny exclaimed when I rang him up to tell him.

  ‘I know. But the worst thing is he must have had some help because he couldn’t pick up all those coins himself. He had a bloody big boxing glove on his right hand, so Stephen must have helped.’

  ‘But he’s only four!’ Johnny gasped.

  ‘I know, but you know what he’s like. They’re as thick as thieves, those two. Stephen just does what Peter tells him to.’

  I heard Johnny sigh on the other end of the line.

  ‘Right, that’s it! Put him in the car and bring him over. He’ll have to apologise and explain himself to the manager.’

  Within the hour, we were standing in the manager’s office as Peter tried to explain what he’d done.

  ‘I’m really, really sorry,’ he said as he wept, with Johnny and I stood behind him.

  But then I noticed the manager’s face. He was trying his best not to laugh.

  ‘What you’ve done is very naughty indeed,’ he said, scolding Peter, who bowed his head in shame.

  With his head dipped down, the manager looked up and gave us a sly wink. He thought the whole thing had been bloody hilarious. So did we after we’d got over the shock.

  The money was duly returned, along with a note of apology, and was then sent to Clacton Council, where it ended up in the charity funds along with the other money.

  A few weeks later, I was sat at home working when the phone rang. It was a club in Gloucester.

  ‘Is that Pat Stewart?’ a gruff voice asked on the other end of the line.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you put on wrestling?’

  For a moment I was speechless.

  ‘Wrestling?’

  ‘Yes, wrestling. You know, like the stuff you see on television on Saturday afternoon.’

  I didn’t have the first clue about wrestling, but I knew my mother was an avid fan.

  ‘Oh, that sort of wrestling. Yes, of course I do,’ I lied. ‘Here, give me your number and I’ll get back to you.’

  I didn’t have any idea what to do or where to start, but I also didn’t want to turn work down. I called up Mam, who told me who was and who wasn’t big in wrestling. The following Saturday, I sat down in front of the TV so that I could watch it

  ‘What are you doing?’ Johnny asked as I sat down with a pen and notepad.

  ‘I’m waiting for the TV credits to roll so I can write down all the wrestling promoters’ names.’

  Johnny looked at me oddly.

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I’m going to book up some wrestling acts for a club in Gloucester,’ I replied.

  I waved my hand to try to get him to move out of the way of the television.

  ‘Er, I see,’ he said.

  By now, he’d come to expect the unexpected from me.

  Once I had all the names, I looked through the phonebook and dialled them up.

  ‘I’d like to book up some wrestlers, please.’

  The man on the other end of the phone asked me if I wanted ring lights.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, trying to sound as though I knew what I was talking about.

  ‘And seconds?’ he added.

  I didn’t have a clue what they were, so I asked him to explain. When he told me it was the man who worked the corner and waved the towel up and down, I refused.

  ‘No, we have our own seconders,’ I told him.

  I booked the wrestlers, called up the club and secured the booking and, more importantly, my commission.

  A week or so later, Johnny, Mam, Dad, the boys and I were sunning ourselves on a beach in Spain when I remembered something.

  ‘What day is it?’ I asked, suddenly sitting up straight on my sun bed.

  ‘It’s Saturday, why?’ Johnny replied.

  ‘Is it?’ I said, leaning back against the sun lounger. ‘I hope the wrestling’s going down all right in Gloucester.’

  Mam and Dad looked over at me as though I’d lost my marbles!

  ‘As long as you don’t expect me to go down there to collect your ten per cent commission!’ Johnny quipped.

  With that I began to laugh and so did Johnny. My work as an agent had taken my life on a strange and sudden turn, but I loved every single moment of it.

  CHAPTER 18

  ABERFAN DISASTER

  With agency work flooding in, we sold our first house and made £200 profit in the process. We used the money to put down the deposit on a three-storey house in a nice area of Cardiff. It cost us £4,000, which seemed like a small fortune, but business was booming, so I decided it was worth the risk.

  ‘I don’t know what we’ll do with all this space, Pat,’ Johnny said, surveying the large empty rooms.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already earmarked the bottom floor as an office.’

  Johnny paused for a moment to consider it.

  ‘It sounds like a plan. We could live on the two upper floors but the bathroom needs a bit of work.’

  He was certainly right about the bathroom. It was extremely old-fashioned and in desperate need of a makeover. I knew Johnny wouldn’t be able to tackle it alone, so I called up Dad, who travelled down from Featherstone to lend a hand.

  One sunny October morning, Johnny and Dad were up in the bathroom doing some tiling, while I worked downstairs. I picked up the phone and spoke to Bing, a concert secretary, about some acts for an upcoming show at his local club. Bing was a miner and had taken the call underground on the pit bottom.

  ‘Let’s talk about these acts, Bing.’ I began.

  I was greeted by silence on the other end of the line. It was obvious that he wasn’t listening. Something or someone had distracted him. Then I heard panicked voices as someone relayed news to him in the background.

  ‘Pat, I’ve got to go,’ Bing said urgently. ‘There’s been a coal slip in Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil.’

  ‘No!’ I gasped. A hand shot up to my mouth in horror.

  ‘Pat,’ Bing said, ‘it’s serious. I’ve just been told that it has fallen in on a school.’

  My blood ran cold as I absorbed the news.

  ‘Listen, I can’t speak. I’ll have to go. Call you later,’ he said, blurting out the words before the line went dead.

  I felt sick. I regularly booked artistes over in Merthyr Tydfil, so I knew the area well. One of my acts – a comedian called Lennie Leighton – lived there. I knew it was a close-knit community and a disaster like this would devastate the whole area and the people living in it.

  ‘Johnny, Dad!’ I called upstairs. ‘Come quick! There’s been a coal slip on a school.’

  I heard a clatter as Johnny and Dad dropped what they were doing and came tearing down the stairs. We sat in the kitchen and switched on the radio, waiting for news. Suddenly, a newsflash came on. The newsreader’s voice was solemn as he announced that a landslide had engulfed an entire school and some houses close to it.

  I dashed through to the front room and turned on th
e television. Grainy black-and-white images appeared. They showed miners – hundreds of them – armed with picks and shovels, trying to dig out children trapped inside Pantglas Junior School. Eyewitnesses had described how the landslide had flowed like liquid, demolishing everything in its path.

  A local man told a reporter that once the landslide had stopped, everything fell silent.

  ‘In that silence, you couldn’t hear a bird or a child.’

  We watched in horror as the news went from bad to worse. The entire school had been engulfed along with eighteen nearby houses. The children had been looking forward to their school holiday only a few hours earlier. But now they were trapped, believed to be dead, along with their teachers.

  ‘That’s it!’ Johnny said, clearly emotional. He wiped the tears from his eyes and stood up. ‘I’m going over there to help.’

  But as he grabbed his coat and headed towards the door, Dad stopped him.

  ‘Johnny, those men are miners,’ he said, pointing at the television screen. ‘They know what they’re doing. You don’t.’

  But Johnny was adamant and shrugged him off. He held up his hands.

  ‘I’ll dig with these if I have to. There must be something I can do to help.’

  ‘Johnny, it don’t matter. With all t’will in t’world, yer’ll be more of a hindrance than a help. They know what they’re doing,’ my father explained. ‘They’re experienced at this sort of thing. They’re trained for emergencies like this. If they can’t rescue those poor souls, no one can.’

  Dad was right, of course, but we, along with the rest of the nation, felt helpless as we sat there, watching and waiting for news.

  The rescue had continued throughout the day and long into the night. My heart sank every time a stretcher was brought out covered with a blanket because you knew another life had been lost.

  That evening, when the boys came in from school, I hugged them just that little bit tighter.

  ‘Those poor, poor parents,’ I said as I wept, holding Stephen in my arms.

  ‘I can’t even begin to imagine how they are feeling,’ Johnny said and sighed sadly.

  As the rescuers battled in vain, news emerged that 144 people had died in the mudslide, including 116 children. The majority of those youngsters – 109 of them – had been aged between just seven and ten years old: the same age as Peter. The last living victim had been found just before 11am – less than two hours after the landslide. Over 40,000 cubic meters of debris, which was 12 meters deep in places, had covered the village in a matter of minutes. They didn’t stand a chance.