JOHNNY WHITFIELD
MEMORIES
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….and then it happened, we were taken to the Martha Frew Home for Children in the village of Crossford.
The present Keavil House Hotel has a 300 year-long history of re-imagining itself, and from the late 1940’s or early 50’s to 1968, it was used as a children’s home. When my two sisters and I arrived it was run by a husband and wife team named Short, who lived there with their teenage son. I can’t remember how we were delivered there, or what was explained to us in plain words.
It may have been that we were told that we were going there for the weekend, or for a week until mum came home. But once we were there we were taken into Mr Shorts’ office and told that our mother was going to be in hospital for a while and that we would be staying at the Home. My older sister C., who was nearly 10, and my soon to be 5 year old sister S., started to weep out loud.
It was in that office, in those few minutes, that I decided I would have to take responsibility. I remember clearly the exact moment, the moment that would change my life, and the exact thought that ran through my head: I can’t rely on the world of people to do the right thing; I must take responsibility myself. The family network had failed us, my father was hapless, and I disliked instantly Mr Short who stood over us in his office.
I didn’t cry then, but wept in my dormitory bed that first night, looking out of the high windows at the faraway stars and the dark trees and aching for my mum.
Once again, my memories of our stay at the Martha Frew home are sparse, but what memories I can evoke are clearly defined. The practise of forcing us to eat everything dished up to us; I could not eat pork without being sick, and had to hide my half-chewed lumps of meat in the dinner-table drawer which was conveniently in front of me. I was caught doing so and was forbidden to leave the table until I had swallowed every sickening lump. The Matron, Mrs Short was in charge of feeding arrangements and she was the person I most feared in that dreadful place. One time I just couldn’t force the pork down and the chewed meat was placed on my plate the following day.
I didn’t know the word at the time of course, but it was a surreal time. My escape plan had not been to run away but to disappear into the mature gardens and to climb a magnificent tree at the front of the house. On my little odysseys I was Don Quixote, the main character from the book I had taken from the library at home in Abbey View, and, as I was to subsequently discover, literatures’ greatest dreamer. One time I came across a dog cemetery in the undergrowth; strangely, in my 20’s I rediscovered that cemetery with my then fiancé L. – who lived with her parents in Crossford – on a still, snowbound Christmas day. I didn’t know what to say to her other than I’d been there before.
One afternoon I fell from the huge tree landing on my head and was concussed for a couple of days. I remember when I landed, an explosion of stars and an incoherence of sound and vision; and the horrible feeling of sickness. There was no-one to console me or to treat my bruised head; or tuck me up in bed with a cup of sweet tea and 2 aspirin, or to soothe my brow, as my mum would have done. I wanted my mum. I had to tell someone, but I wasn’t sure who. There was one nurse – the female staff were all to be called nurse – and they wore nurses uniforms, the sort worn, it seems to me, in Carry on Nursing – she must have been in her late teens, who bathed me that evening and noticed I was out of sorts. She was gentle with me and I put my trust in her from then on. The shampoo the nurses used was rough gear, and my eyes stung each bath-time. The young nurse would bathe my eyes to reduce the sting and told me teasingly not to be such a baby.
I thought of that young girl with blonde hair and kind eyes for years after, wondering who she was and what became of her. She managed to get from me that I liked to draw and asked me to draw her a flower, which I gladly did. Apart from the sweetheart nurse the only other good memory I have of the Home, is the milky cocoa we were served up once we were in our pyjamas. I looked forward to it and even now when I drink cocoa I am instantly back in that long first-floor room in too-large allocated stripey-blue pyjamas.
The first thing that Mr and Mrs Short did was split us up. I worried for my sister S., who was not yet 5, and who was put into a separate dormitory to C. and me. It may be that we were organised in terms of age and gender, but it does seem counter-intuitive and heartless, or manifestly cruel. I have never talked with my sisters about our time at the Home, but around the age of 5 S. started breaking the windows of our house in Tweed Street and there was talk of a ‘nervous breakdown’.
All letters sent by our mum from Stratheden over the months were opened by Mrs Short, and 10 shilling notes were removed. I can’t remember reading any of the letters, but I knew this was a moral issue. Any gifts or sweeties brought in by Auntie R. and Uncle J. were taken from us – such gifts were to be shared amongst all of the children. But they never were, and the suspicion was that the dreaded son got the lot.
After a while Uncle J. would drive his Austin Cambridge up the long driveway and stop at the inner gate. We would run out and Auntie would give us chocolate and sweeties there, and tell us to keep them to ourselves. And Auntie R. would kiss me and tell me not to worry, that mum would get well and we would be home soon. I knew somehow that she was devastated because she couldn’t have us with her, but she had 3 young children of her own, R., L. and C., and that her council house in Oakley was too small to hold 3 more. What I didn’t understand, and still don’t, was why each of us could not be billeted with one or other of our in-laws, our aunties or uncles or Nana; perhaps the authorities thought otherwise and that my father’s haplessness brought us up a long country drive bordered by green fields and swathes of wild flowers to this place that was run something like a Dickensian Poorhouse.
There were 2 breaks from the daily routine at the Home before the summer holidays ended and we attended the local school, Crossford and Cairneyhill Primary. The first break was a visit by my mother; what I remember of this was a walk with baby D. in his pram and the intense love I felt for my mother as we walked along and picked hips and haws from the hedgerow, and she talked quietly. I don’t think I could love her more.
I don’t know how she was transported there with D. in his pram, but I have never forgotten the intensity of love I felt for my mum that day.
The second break was a weekend at home with mum. We had been offered a trip to the pictures in Dunfermline, or a weekend at home. There was no debate. Mum slept downstairs on the sofa with D. in his cot, and she tucked us into our snug beds on the 2 nights. It was utter bliss. There was an incident in the street, kicking a ball around when one boy, a large, dull cousin of B. and R. F. called G. asked if my mum was back from the looney-bin. This was like a kick in the stomach for me and I disliked G. even more than I disliked him before. Muckle fool.
Our first day at our new school was memorable for me because it was S.’s first day ever at school, and dad cycled out in his khaki shorts to be there at the school gates. Again, it was in bright sunlight, and I remember my dad’s balding head being red with sunburn. It didn’t impress me, the presence of my father in his shorts and with his sunburned head. As a father he had betrayed us, had betrayed S. more than anyone has a right to. To this day we have never talked as siblings about this or anything connected with it.
I rather liked the school, as the pupils were friendly, and one fat boy with glasses, who I remember as looking just like Piggy in Peter Brookes’ film Lord of the Flies, asked me if I missed my mum and how awful it must be. He could only have been 8, but it seemed that the local children had developed an empathy with the kids from the home when the expectation would have been antipathy. There was one classroom as I remember, in which children of all ages were taught. Maybe this was why I liked it, the oddity and eccentricity of it all. As it was I was challenged to race the fastest boy in my ‘class’ and I beat him over 2 laps of the playground. I had now officially bonded with my classmates, and these few memories are like shining nuggets of gold in the quagmire of that time at the Martha Frew Home.
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