At My Mother's Knee (39 page)

As always, Aunty Chris ran a tight ship; anyone who tried to
buy booze and didn't look eighteen was given a sharp lecture
and ejected from the shop. She was sympathetic and discreet
when dealing with her regular alcoholics, and she knew the
name and price of every bottle of wine in the shop. She even
fought off two robbers who demanded the contents of the
till by hitting one of them over the head with a brush, causing
them both to turn on their heels and run, Aunty Chris in
hot pursuit. She became quite a connoisseur of wine after a
while and her 'posh' customers from Pine Walks frequently
consulted her.

'This is a lovely little Bordeaux, slightly peppery but nice and
light, Mr Mason,' she'd say, presenting the bottle for her client's
inspection. 'Goes lovely with cold meats, and very reasonably
priced considering its superior nature.' For someone who didn't
drink she knew an awful lot about wine.

'How do you know all this?' I asked her. 'How do you know
what region the grape comes from and what it tastes like?'

'Easy,' she replied, looking at me as if I were mad. 'It says on
the label.'

Christmas Eve was a busy night for Ashe and Nephew. It
didn't close until eight thirty and a taxi had been booked to
bring Aunty Chris and Aunty Anne over to Holly Grove. It was
Aunty Annie's first Christmas since the death of Uncle Al, and
she seemed to have shrunk since I'd last seen her. 'Nice to have
you home for Christmas, lad,' she said in a tiny voice, giving
me a kiss. 'I hope you haven't been up to your old tricks.'

''Eck, 'eck, the return of the prodigal,' Aunty Chris said,
coming in the door behind her lugging various shopping bags.
'Nice to see you, but something tells me that you're up to your
neck in shite again.'

'Why do you say that?' I asked, turning bright scarlet.

'Because I can read you like a book, love, that's why. Now
help me with these friggin' presents, they weigh a ton.' As I've already said, two hundred years earlier and they'd have been
burned as witches.

At midnight mass I prayed, with the passion of the good
penitent, a childish entreaty that the Almighty had heard many
times before. 'I promise I'll never be bad again if you just help
me out of this mess one more time . . .'

I saw the new year in at the RAFA club. Mrs Mack had been
only too happy to give me my old job back. I was a good barman,
surprisingly honest in spite of recent events, and wouldn't
dream of fiddling the till or helping myself to drinks, despite
having a criminal record and growing by the minute.

'Happy new year,' Mrs Mack cheered, sherry in hand, as the
Palm Court trio struck up 'Auld Lang Syne'. 'I hope that 1973
will be an eventful one and full of surprises for you.'

She certainly got her wish.

A
FEW DAYS INTO THE NEW YEAR, THELMA BRAILEY RANG UP. 'I
thought you were smart,' she raged down the line. 'I
thought that you would go places but I was wrong, the only
place you're going is gaol, but before they lock you up you're
going to pay me my commission. Ten per cent of your first
week's wages, that was the deal.'

'I haven't had any wages, so take a hike and don't ring
again,' I said, giving her my best Holden Caulfield and putting
the phone down on her.

'Who was that on the phone?' my dad asked, looking up
from studying his Pools coupon.

Tired of lying and wanting to start the new year with a clean
slate, I told him the truth – a slightly embellished version of it,
putting the Wheatsheaf on a par with Blake's 'dark Satanic
mills' and portraying myself as an innocent at large, which in
retrospect I can see that I was. There was no need to exaggerate
when it came to Finch, he spoke for himself. My father
went ballistic when I told him about our encounter on the
stairs and to my relief and surprise he was outraged by what
he saw as their disproportionate reaction to my crime.

'I just might give the manager of that hotel a visit,' he said
angrily. 'But first I'm going over to Liverpool to have a word
with that woman in that so-called employment agency.'

He didn't have to – she was pulling up outside the house on
her moped.

Thelma Brailey was bristling with her own importance and
on the verge of spontaneously combusting with fury. My dad
was civility itself, inviting her in, politely enquiring why she
was so upset.

'Do you realize that you are harbouring a criminal under
your roof ?' she shouted at my father, determined not to be
mollified by his solicitous attitude.

'I'm well aware of that,' he replied, unruffled, 'but you'll be
leaving soon.'

'How dare you!' she squawked, jumping up from the sofa as
if she'd just sat on my ma's pincushion. 'Are you accusing me
of unprofessional behaviour? That's slander!'

My dad in his reasonable way threatened her with everything
from having her licence revoked by Liverpool City
Council to the Inland Revenue; however, he did pay the old
witch the commission I owed her. Despite getting her pound of
flesh, Thelma was incandescent with rage and flounced speechless
out of the house and down the path, bumping into my
mother as she went.

'What's up with her?' she asked, watching Thelma ram her
helmet on and mount her bike. 'She's not another Jehovah's
Witness, is she? That's twice this week.'

Before my dad could sit her down and explain, there was a
knock at the door and my mother ran to answer it. 'If that's
her back then I'm going to tell her what she can do with her
bloody
Watchtower
,' she said grimly, opening the door not to
Thelma but to a young man.

'Mrs O'Grady?' he said, smiling. 'I'm from the Birkenhead
Probation Services, here about your son's forthcoming court
appearance.'

She took it quite well considering, claiming that she'd
known something untoward had happened the moment I walked through the kitchen door on Christmas Eve. She was
also slightly appeased by the news that I'd landed a job.

In the early seventies Liverpool was still relatively prosperous,
jobs were plentiful and courtesy of the
Angela Chapman Employment Agency
I went to work for various shipping
offices
as a bill of lading clerk. There were a lot of ships
coming into Liverpool from all over the world, the docks were
extremely busy and it was to be a few years before containerization
rendered them all but obsolete. I went from one
shipping office to another – Nigerian National Shipping Line,
Elder Dempster Line, Cunard. I'd leave one job on the Friday
and start another on the Monday. I'd been summonsed to
appear at
Chertsey Magistrates Court
and despite my father's
protests refused to allow him to come with me, preferring to
take the midnight coach again alone. The coach pulled in late
and I had to be in court no later than nine. Since I had no idea
where Chertsey was I took a black cab from Victoria Coach
Station. Luckily I was flush thanks to the regular wage from
two jobs, but even so I hadn't banked on spending half of it on
a black cab. Not wanting the driver to think that I was a
Liverpool scallie up in court for thieving, I told him that I was
a reporter from the
Echo
covering a very important case.

To my horror I saw on my charge sheet that stealing a bottle
of Campari could mean a custodial sentence. The magistrate
spoke of my crime as if it was the theft of an incubator from a
premature baby. After threatening me with prison should I ever
have the audacity to appear before him again, he fined me fifty
pounds and put me on probation for a month. I thanked my
guardian angel and left Chertsey vowing that the 'Frank Nitti
of Birkenhead', a handle given to me by Aunty Chrissie, would
never be up before the beak again, or ever set foot in Virginia
Water.

*

One evening there was a documentary on BBC2 about the rise
of the gay movement.

'Turn that gang of lavatory cowboys over,' my mother roared
from her usual spot on the sofa, knitting furiously. 'Have you
seen this lot, Paddy?' she asked my dad, who had seen them but
preferred to ignore them, clearing his throat disapprovingly and
going back to his Spot the Ball in the paper. I was only too glad
to get up and turn the telly over. I'd rather have died the slow
death than have to sit in the same room when something as
sensitive as homosexual liberation, a topic guaranteed to induce
toe-curling embarrassment for me, was on the telly.

'Leave it.' My mother stopped me in my tracks. 'Let's see
what they're up to.'

Homosexuality
had only been decriminalized in 1967. Then
in '69, at a Greenwich Village bar called Stonewall, riots had
broken out, instigated mainly by drag queens who were sick
and tired of repeated police harassment.

'Times are changing, Moll,' my dad sighed, getting up from
his armchair. 'I think I'll go for a quick pint.'

I squirmed inwardly as I watched a camp young man in a
pink T-shirt, the words 'Gay Lib' emblazoned across his chest,
kiss his boyfriend full on the mouth. Had I been alone in the
room I'd have relished this chance to learn about gay life, but
sat here with my mother it was pure torture. She let out
pantomime squeals of exaggerated horror at everything the
guy in the pink T-shirt had to say. He spoke articulately about
an organization called the
Campaign for Homosexual Equality
and how there were millions of gay men and women in the
world living a lie and it was time to 'come out'.

'Don't let me catch you coming out,' my mother said, returning
purposefully to her knitting, tut-tutting like Skippy the
Bush Kangaroo. 'Because you'll be knocked right back in
again, d'you hear me? There'll be no Gay Libbin' in this house,
my lad.'

Scarlet with embarrassment, I asked her what she meant.

'I'm just warning you, that's all,' she said, pursing her lips,
'just in case you fancy taking up with that lot. I wouldn't put
anything past you.'

I slunk upstairs to my bedroom and lay on the bed listening
to
Carly Simon
's album
No Secrets
and reading the
New
Musical Express
. As fate would have it there was a small
personal ad at the back for the
CHE
with a London phone
number. I'd been seeing my old flame
Evelyn from school
again
for a short while, though we were more suited as friends than
lovers and both of us knew it. She'd fallen for a male nurse
she'd met while
training
at St Cath's Hospital and was talking
about marriage. I was certainly going to miss her but was
happy that she'd found her soulmate. When, I wondered,
would I ever find mine? Maybe the answer lay with the CHE.

The next day I rang them up and was put in touch with
Robin
, who ran the Liverpool branch from his flat in Upper
Parliament Street. He sounded enthusiastic and invited me to
attend the next meeting. 'Oh, before you hang up,' he added
cheerfully, 'what's your name?' I didn't want to give my real
name in case these people expected me to come out and run
through the streets of Liverpool screaming 'I'm gay.' I wasn't
ready for such extremes just yet. Best to give an alias, I
thought, until I see what they're like.

'Simon,' I answered, Simon being my favourite name at the
time. 'Simon King.' No prizes for guessing the inspiration
behind the surname.

The day of the meeting I was beside myself with anticipation.
Would it be an orgy of unbridled lust and passion, I
wondered (I'd read one of my ma's Angélique books), and if
so, what would happen if I didn't want to participate? Would
I be drugged and gang-raped while unconscious or just thrown
out on to the street and mocked for being uptight and inexperienced?
I'd cross these bridges when I came to them, I decided. Whatever happened, I was going to meet and experience
at first hand what the
Daily Mail
liked to call 'The
Twilight World of the Homosexual'.

At the time I was working in the offices of a plastics factory
on the Liverpool Dock Road. Having finally exhausted most of
the shipping offices in town, I was now dabbling in the
mysteries of polythene production. Like every other job I'd had
since Christmas, six in all, it bored me to tears and I was restless
for some excitement. I hoped the CHE would provide me
with it.

I arrived at Robin's flat three quarters of an hour early. He
opened the door to me wearing nothing but a short towel, confirming
my earlier suspicions about an orgy. Thank God I've
had a bath, I thought to myself as I nervously entered this den
of iniquity. It transpired that this wasn't Sodom and
Gomorrah: Robin had been in the shower when I arrived as he
wasn't expecting anyone till eight but he kindly showed me
into his untidy front room, left me with a copy of
Gay News
and went to get dressed.

Tonight's meeting was all about Welcoming Newcomers and
Robin had recruited a few stalwarts of the CHE to help out.
When everyone had finally arrived we were given tea and
biscuits, not what I'd expected at a bacchanalian orgy – but
then nor was the group. I was discouraged to find that they all
seemed perfectly ordinary and unexciting. I was by far the
youngest in the room and, looking around, there was certainly
no one that I fancied.

Robin chaired the meeting. A tall, gangly, wellspoken
student at the university, he seemed nervous and shy as he
welcomed this motley bunch of new recruits, telling us proudly
that there were now over three thousand members in the UK
and that the number was growing daily. It was all so pleasant
and genteel, we could've been at a 1930s WI meeting in
Tunbridge Wells. The atmosphere was far from predatory or threatening and after our initial shyness wore off we talked
freely and openly among ourselves, which made me regret
using an alias. These were nice people and I wouldn't mind
coming back to attend further meetings.