23. Relations

Michael Watson had a very large extended family. His father, Gordon, kept his strongly held political opinions to himself whenever there was a family gathering on his wife's side of the family. He was wise to do so. They were a temperamental lot with widely differing views.

Her oldest sister, Rachel, had married a Welsh miner. He was a communist and she a conservative. He took the view that there was a class struggle that had to be fought. She believed the hard times they experienced during the recent long strikes were largely the fault of the workers themselves. Rachel's husband couldn't find work after the strikes and they and their four kids were poverty-stricken. Dick, Margaret's oldest brother, arranged for money and food parcels to be sent every week, from Morecambe, to Rachel and her family. This went on for over two years.

Michael's Uncle Dick was adamant in stating that he had no politics. He was an ardent royalist and a temperance freak. Being the oldest boy, he had long memories of a growing family going short of food because his father, James, spent too much money in pubs. His front bedroom window often had a Union Jack hanging from it. A picture of royalty was stuck to his front parlour window long after Coronation Day..

Some of the family liked a game of cards. If Dick was playing, alcohol, cigarettes and bad language would be forbidden. He was the oldest brother and tough like his father, so they all fell in line. If their father, James, was there, Dick would make excuses and go off home to his new wife. After his departure bottles and packets of fags would be produced and everyone would relax.

Dick loved Beatrice, his mother, dearly, and hated James. He remembered the evenings in Welsh pubs and orgies in a navvy's shack. He recalled the squandering of money, his father's bravado when faced with heavy gambling losses. He remembered how this philandering had cost his mother and the youngest kids at home dear. Sometimes, after a month away, James would return home empty-handed and hungry, demanding food from his hard-pressed wife. Dick saved what he could and gave his mother all his spare cash. James would take this and go and meet his village drinking mates. Sometimes, despite Beatrice's meekness, there would be a row on his return and Beatrice would have a bruised face.

Apart from their physical strength and capacity for gruelling, hard, work the father and his eldest son had nothing in common. Dick took his first chance to find work away from his father. After they moved to Morecambe, he went into lodgings until he was married. He returned to the old family home only to see his mother. Dick detested his father.

Despite his Puritanism, Dick had an eye for attractive women and he liked dancing. When he was twenty years old, he met Molly, a dark-haired, round-faced, plump girl of eighteen and married her. He ignored the fact that she'd had many boy friends before him. Once they became a couple Dick was very possessive. If her long-lashed, brown eyes slanted sideways and she smiled her sweet smile at one of his brothers or some man she knew and whom they met in the street, he could turn nasty. He would give her a tongue-lashing when he had her on her own. However, he never harmed her physically. They had only one daughter. Molly was spared the burden of almost unlimited pregnancies. She never endured the endless tasks of child-bearing and rearing which had been the lot of Dick's mother. Gentle Molly loved Dick dearly. She never felt resentment at her husband's dominating of her nor of his extreme and narrow views.

Molly was almost too soft-hearted. She liked to kiss and hug all of her nephews and nieces. The boys reached a certain age and didn't want to be slopped-over but they all liked her. When they met, she always found money from her purse for Michael to buy himself, "A little treat from your Aunt Molly!"

Peter Davies was Michael's favourite cousin. When he was little, Michael and his mother would occasionally catch a bus to Christie Avenue, near to Morecambe Football Club. His Aunt Belle and Uncle Tony lived there. A neighbour was Eric Bartholomew, who would become world-famous one day as Eric Morecambe. Eric's mother was friendly with Aunt Belle.

Belle and Margaret and their husbands were great friends. Belle was really beautiful, with dark hair and deep brown eyes. She was a vivacious, affectionate young woman but fickle. She would give you the world when you were with her, but forget you existed and break any promise she'd made you once you were out of her sight. If you wanted anything from Belle, you were wise to take it the moment that it was offered.

One day, Michael was playing with his cousin at Christie Avenue and listening, as usual, to the grown-ups.

"I liked that dress you were wearing last week, Belle."

"Did you? Just a sec.... Here take it! You have it! I'm fed up with it."

Or.... "Remember that material you said I could have Belle? You know the stuff you said you had left over from making your curtains."

"Did I Margaret? Oh dear, I forgot. I gave it to our Charlotte when she was here yesterday."

Like all his aunts, Belle was kind to Michael and she always gave him a slice of cake when he arrived and some sweets as he left. When he was a teenager, she'd moved to a street near Regent's Park, and he had become a secret smoker. He'd visit and she'd give him a packet of twenty Players cigarettes. "Here, you little so-and-so!" she'd say. "Don't let your mother see them or I'll be in trouble. And don't forget your Aunt Belle when you're out earning. You can take me to the Park Hotel for a gin and tonic."

Belle's husband, Tony, was the quiet one of the large family. In Morecambe, he worked for the same builder from 1925 until 1972. He became foreman and some said that he carried the firm. He was the only one of James Davies' sons who spent any time down a pit in South Wales when he was a boy. He'd persuaded his father to let him start work with his best friend, Billy, instead of working with his father and his older brothers. He did not want to do sub-contracted, fancy, plaster work away from home. He and Billy Jones went down the mine. Tony's job was opening and closing doors, to let the ponies and their wagons go through, to-and-from the coal face. Billy was much stronger than skinny Tony and he'd been set to work loading wagons.

It was nearly a fortnight after they'd started work when Tony heard part of the roof crash to the floor. There were shouts and screams from down the line. He left his post and watched the desperate struggle of the half-naked men to free the half-buried body of Billy from a pile of rubble. There was hardly a mark on him when they freed him, but his neck was broken and he was dead.

Tony was horrified. He vomited, then fled the scene, running all the way to the pit bottom where the cage came down. But the rescuers carrying the stretcher followed him. He journeyed to the surface in the same cage as Billy's body. From the top he ran all the way home.

His father was angry with his wife for persuading him to let the boy work at the pit. For the rest of his life, Tony suffered from claustrophobia and had terrible dreams about being trapped in enclosed spaces. He always had to sleep with the bedroom door and windows wide open and he found crowds unbearably stifling and the cause of panic attacks. He avoided all confined spaces.

Michael never had a long conversation with the quiet man but he remembered with affection his murmured, "Hello son." And "Cheerio, Michael. Be a good boy for your Mam!"

"I will Uncle Tony. Thanks, Uncle Tony!" he'd say as he pocketed the parting gift of a tanner.

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