Chapter 1: The Scrapyard

It was a Thursday night in April 1965 that my life got violently diverted. My gentle childhood ride along the road of normality ended with a jolt, and the new path allowed for no u-turns.

I was ten years old and lived with my mum, dad and little sister Caitrìona (Caity) in a Yorkshire pit village. Dad was a miner at the nearby colliery, and all roads on the map of my life had looked to lead there too. Our family was poor and would never amount to much, but that didn’t matter. We had all we needed, and ours was a generally happy life.

That terrible, life-changing night was when both my parents were killed.

I’ll never forget the words of the policeman who found Caity and me at our neighbour’s house. He knelt in front of me to say: “Son, I’m afraid there’s been a car accident. Your parents have been hurt.” I particularly remember those words because I could tell they were a lie. The pain in his eyes gave him away. I knew they were far more than just hurt. He questioned us about our relatives (there was just my Uncle Will who lived in America), then we were carted off to the hospital along with Mrs Collins, our babysitter.

I worried the whole journey, whereas Caity was thrilled about getting to ride in a police car, as only a six-year-old can be. I tried to let her enthusiasm distract me, but images of car crashes kept going through my mind. As we drove along the country roads towards the hospital in Sheffield, I wondered where the accident had happened and whether we would pass the site. Thankfully we didn’t.

At the hospital, Caity and I were dumped on a prim looking nurse with one of those silly hats on, whilst the policeman and Mrs Collins went somewhere else. The nurse must have been about thirty, I thought. Definitely not young, but she was friendly and got a few little toys out that she helped Caity play with.

We were sat in that waiting room for about ten minutes before the policeman returned and motioned the nurse out into the hall. When she came back in she sat down next to me and asked Caity to join us. Caity brought a toy with her and sat on the nurse’s lap. Then came the sentence I was completely dreading.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got some very bad news. When your mummy and daddy’s car crashed, they were hurt very badly. The ambulance men brought them here to the hospital as quickly as they could, and the doctors tried very, very hard to make them better, but they were hurt too badly. Your mummy and daddy both died. They’re in heaven now.”

Caity burst into tears and wailed. I just sat in stunned silence. I was ten years old and an orphan. My little sister was the only person I had left in the world. There was my uncle in America, but I’d never met him and couldn’t think how we would find him or whether he would even be willing to take us in. What did the police do with children who had nobody to look after them?

I felt myself getting more and more anxious as thoughts went round and round my head, blurring into one another. I felt shivery and hot and prickly and dizzy and...

I woke up gradually, almost like it was morning and I’d had a good night’s sleep. Except I was laid out on the floor of the hospital waiting room with the nurse looking down at me, and my sister behind her, looking terrified and sucking her thumb.

“You fainted. Don’t try to get up yet. Can you stick your tongue out for me?” I fainted?! Can’t she call it ‘passed out’? That sounds much less girly. I stuck my tongue out to her satisfaction and gave a weak smile to Caity, who just kept sucking her thumb. After a while, nursey helped me up to a chair, and Caity came to hug me. We just clutched each other in silent grief. I don’t know how long we sat like that, but eventually another lady came in. This one looked like a school ma’am, and far less friendly than nursey.

“Finnley and Caitrìona Harrison?”, she asked us. (And for those wondering, our mother was Scottish.)

“Finn and Caity”, I corrected her, causing her lips to purse in disapproval. She explained to us that, as we didn’t have anyone to look after us tonight, she would take us to a home run by the council. She was from social services, and it was her job to look after children when their parents weren’t able to. That sounded okay, but I just felt like there was a cloud of gloom around her.

You might think that the day of my parents’ deaths would be the worst day of my life, but you would be wrong. It was the day after. From waking up on that first full day as an orphan, to the moment I fell asleep that night, it was just agony. Deep, all-consuming emotions of sadness, fear and anxiety were with me through everything I did that day.

The orphanage we’d been taken to late the previous night had the same aura of gloom that the social worker had. It was simply a scrapyard for children. I could see it on the faces of the boys having breakfast with me.

That day was made worse by the staff not letting me see my sister much. The morning was spent answering questions from adults, about school, interests, hobbies and so on. They were on a mission to extract every morsel of information about my life and scribble it down in their files.

I finally saw Caity at lunchtime, which was just the two of us as the other kids were at school. When she saw me, she ran and hugged me, which made some of the darkness in my world recede for a while. She told me that she didn’t like it there as it smelt like TCP (a nasty, smelly antiseptic liquid).

In the afternoon they took us both together to see a shrink for grief counselling. I don’t think that did the slightest bit of good. At that point, all I wanted was to know practical things about funerals and my uncle. The more I thought about it, the more my hopes for the future were focussed on Uncle Will. The prospect of not finding him or his refusing to take us was too horrible to even consider. I didn’t want to think about staying in an orphanage for the rest of my childhood.

After that, Caity and I were to be split up again, which I fought hard. Why they couldn’t understand that we needed each other for support was beyond me. Arguing with the house staff apparently wasn’t a good decision, though, as I was sent to my room in disgrace.

I didn’t get to eat dinner with all the other boys that night, but that was okay. At that point, I preferred solitude to forced socialising. A little while later there was a knock on my door, which was then opened uninvited. I’d expected one of the staff to bring me some left-over dinner, but instead, it was a boy about my age. He gave me an understanding smile and said: “I’ve gotcha dinner”. He put it on the desk in my little room but didn’t make to leave. Was I gong to have to endure conversation after all? I just said “thanks” and sat at the desk to eat, otherwise ignoring him.

Before I could eat my first mouthful, he said in his broad Yorkshire accent, “It tastes like shit, but it’s good as w’get ‘ere. Is supposed to be cottage pie, but me mum used to make cottage pie, and this is nowt like it!” I tried it, and he was right. I think I must have screwed up my face or something because he laughed and said: “Told ya”.

After another few mouthfuls, he spoke again. “Look, I know y’don’t want t’talk, and that’s fair enough. But take ma’advise: don’t piss off the staff. They’s always right, and we’s always naughty kids what need to’t learn better. Most-a them’s okay norm’ly, but jus’ bi-warned, eh? An’ if ya’ever want summut t’talk to while you’s here, come find me anytime. I’m Harry.”

He started to leave without trying to get me to reply. I really appreciated that he offered friendship but still gave me space. “Harry”, I said as he was closing the door behind himself. “Thanks.” He just nodded and shut the door.

Later that evening the man in charge came and read me the riot act. Basically, I was never to argue with his staff again if I knew what was good for me. It apparently wasn’t possible to be with my sister all the time because the girls were kept a safe distance away in a different building. The really scary bit, prefaced of course by him saying “I don’t want to scare you”, was that it was possible we might be split up if one of us was adopted.

That was the terrible end to an agonising day. After he had left with my dinner tray, I cried, long and hard. After the loss of my parents, I couldn’t bear the thought of not being with the only other person I loved. One of my answers to the shrink earlier had been that I hadn’t cried since the accident, so maybe he’d deliberately provoked tears for my own good. If so, he succeeded, as the dam really burst and I cried myself to sleep.

Chapter 2 »