A sink school and a broken Britain, symptoms of a dis-functional democracy. Can a dying teacher with a vision, a recently released armed robber with nothing and a twenty-five year old widowered musician walking a tightrope with the abyss of insanity on one side and the temptations of suicide on the other do anything to help…?
That was just some of the fanciful blurb the publishers used to describe Jamie Mac the book Agnes wrote based on these notes and her research. Strictly true, but over sensational for my taste.
Not much better, the reviewer in What Book wrote, The personal reflections of Jamie Mac, singer, musician and educator, the charismatic and universally belovèd century old social engineer and leader of the Madeleine reform movement concerning the persons and events that shaped him in his formative years enabling him to mastermind, without violence, the transformation of his nation to a self determining society. A transformation that rapidly spread to every corner of the globe. The book includes the auxiliary tales of those world shaping and shattering events as seen by persons close to him compiled by the author, Agnes McCann, his niece.
However others describe it, these are my own words, written initially for the benefit of of my grandchildren and their descendants, but if you find explanation tedious miss my words out and go straight to the book.
I am James Edward McMillan, known to the world as Jamie Mac. At ninety-eight, though in good health, I suspect I am reviewing my memoirs for what will probably be the last time. Whilst all know of the very public rôle I played in the changes and upheavals of the last forty years, and now even of what went on in secret too, few know of the events of my early life out of the public’s eye, and by the time you are reading this those who made it all possible will have become remote historical characters in the well documented but dry accounts of those days.
It has already started to happen. I knew them all well, and I loved many of them. Edwards died eighty-five years ago. Wheels, Eleanor and Mum have been gone almost half century now, Mikey’s been dead nearly thirty years and Sophie almost as long. My wife Maria died nearly twenty years ago and I have outlived my four daughters and their husbands. My grandchildren are middle aged, the eldest of them has three grandchildren and the rest are looking forward to theirs.
I am an anachronism, literally a man living out of his time. My memory is still good, but time erodes and blurs things simply because a lot happens in a century. I find it is only my diaries that enable me to determine with certainty which of my daughters did what. This is not an autobiography in any sense, for that kind of information you will have to either read my diaries or wait for yet another biographer, it is merely a selection of the events that mattered to me in a personal way. It is my tale of those individuals and events I consider to have shaped me, though some events I have included just because they amuse me.
The extracts from my diaries, which I have been writing since the age of eleven, and other documents I have included are written in the way they were written at the time to convey the sense of those times best as seen through my eyes as I was then, initially an eleven year old, though it should be obvious where I have added explanatory remarks long after the events took place, usually in square brackets, thus, [explanatory remark].
Mikey and Sophie’s tales were compiled by Agnes McCann, their eldest grandchild, so they could be included with my version of events for balance. She used my memories and writings, letters we had all written, newspaper articles and their own diaries too, as well as interviewing hundreds who had something to add. It must be said Mikey was an indifferent diarist, though Sophie had kept one from the age of eight. Agnes also put together the events as seen from Mum’s and from Mikey’s parents’ perspectives, a task so difficult I had not even considered asking her to do it. Her researches into Wheels’ involvement in events are truly eye opening. As she said he was a shady but complex man.
For more on Wheels read her book Wheels McCann: The Best of Bad Men. Much of what is here you will find shocking, but that was how things were in those days, and that is why the Madeleine reforms were necessary. That Agnes could create a readable manuscript from the dry and mostly dull notes and records I gave her is to me a wonder. That she could recreate the events from the perspectives of the persons close to me in such a way as to add so much to what I wanted to say is something for which I am truly grateful.
Jamie
It doesn’t seem so long ago now, but it is true as you age each year blurs into the next ever faster, and next week it will have been twenty years since I started as an eleven year old at Helton High, and, like everybody else who ever came into contact with him, I’ll never forget Edwards. Yes, you read me aright, Edwards. No title, he never used one, and that’s what everyone, governors, staff, parents and pupils, called him to his face, Edwards, even the media got it right eventually.
He’d been head of languages at a school in Bankirk. Bankirk was once a town in Scotland, but despite having been in England for centuries now, we still speak like the Scots we are and wear the kilts. Some of us resent the English simply because Bankirk is in England, and that often makes for difficult relationships with the English we work with and who dwell amongst us. Anyway, whether that played any part in Edwards’ troubles or not, story had it Edwards had been too much of his own man and too well liked and trusted by the kids to fit.
His inflexible integrity could make him a difficult man to deal with, and many staff believed the management would have been happy to see the back of him for some time. He’d not even understood what political correctness was about, and in those days one ignored it at one’s peril, and as a result Edwards had lived with years of difficult relationships with the management. [Political correctness, or PC as it was usually known then, was a ridiculous, and thankfully long dead, all pervasive and all powerful attitude and policy of being careful not to offend or upset anyone belonging to a group of people in society believed to have a disadvantage, irrespective of how obnoxious he was.]
Three years before going to Helton, he had responded to sixteen year olds’ questions concerning drinking responsibly and how to give up smoking, that much was widely known to be true because the kids had talked about it, and also of their subsequent interviews concerning the matter.
Scuttlebutt was the management must have decided they could use it to get him to quit. Rumour also had it he’d had a case for constructive dismissal, but he just went home and didn’t bother going back to work. [Constructive dismissal occurred when an employee resigned as a result of the employer creating a hostile work environment. Since the resignation was not truly voluntary, it was in effect an illegal termination of contract, and was justifiable cause for a grievance procedure.]
He had not managed to find a job after that. Why was the subject of much speculation, that his only close friend on the staff said nothing added to the speculation. Edwards never spoke of the matter because, according to those who knew him as well as any did, he wouldn’t have been over bothered since he was independently wealthy. All that was known for certain was he was at work on a mid-term Wednesday, was seen by a number of colleagues coming out of the head’s office with his professional association representative after school, followed by the head and other members of the management team, and then he was never seen at school again.
That his name was never again mentioned by the management fuelled the speculations of the intelligent on the staff, and some felt they had arrived at the truth of what had happened when they remembered he’d said for years, “If I get upset enough I’ll just walk out, in the middle of a lesson if need be.” Word also had it the only reason he’d got another job was because, after one look on the internet, [the internet was the precursor of the databloc], nobody else was insane enough to apply for the job of headteacher of Helton High.
Helltown High had broken thirteen heads in ten years, and the headship was without doubt the most toxic of poisoned chalices. Even though when one after the other three sets of expensive, high flying, inner city hardened, senior management teams with almost unlimited authority, and budget, had been parachuted in to sort it out, and one after the other failed to make any difference at all, it still had ten years of solid performance as a Defost failure behind it.
[Defost, was the acronym used for the Department for standards. Defost inspected schools. It had cost billions and long been considered by many parents, teachers and social commentators to have cost not a few lives as well and achieved next to nothing. Edwards’ belief you could not turn a school round without ensuring the community it was embedded in could stand on its own feet too had eventually been seen to be the solution, and by the time of the Madeleine reforms, like many other organisations funded out of tax payers’ money, Defost was deemed an unnecessary waste of public money and was disbanded as unfit for purpose.]
Helltown High was the ultimate academy for prospective graduates in the schools of serious and violent crime. Oh, and I forgot, thirteen year old motherhood too, the school had had two eleven year olds with a kid before I went there. Collectively the kids had far more social workers than they had teachers.
We didn’t know of anything better. Those of us who knew who our dads were knew to the day when our mums planned on moving house, the day before our dads were released from gaol. Our mums were no better than the no hopers we were. Their lives like ours had been wasted before conception and blighted thereafter, but then the gods smiled upon our benighted lives. Edwards, who came from a long way away north was a man with what to most was a strange moral code, but one he never deviated from by so much as a hair’s breadth, had decided to teach locally.
After years of difficulties for doing what he believed in, helping kids to make a future for themselves by teaching them how to make better decisions, he left his difficulties behind him. He wouldn’t let things grind him down, and since he couldn’t get a job going sideways and not prepared to go down he went up, and we were the lucky ones.
Like everything else he did, he did headship his way, and the hell with those who didn’t like it. The governors’ choice was Hobson’s, it was accept Edwards and his completely unheard of ideas on how to run a school which, given nothing remotely conventional had achieved anything, at least sounded as if they had a snowflake in hell’s chance of success, or run a school for two and a half thousand kids that only had eight hundred regular attenders without a head, which was illegal, or close it with nowhere to send the kids to, which was impossible. They were bare-arsed over a barrel with no choice, and Edwards knew it, and he was close enough to the end not to give a damn.
Over the summer Edwards had had the sign at the front of the school repainted to read,
You are entering Helltown High - a dangerously educative establishment. You enter at your own risk. The management will not be held responsible for anything you learn here, but you are most welcome. Edwards Headteacher of Helltown High.
There was some foreign writing above that which we later found out said the same, but in Portuguese. It was only much later it sank in the Portuguese came first. We knew he was going to be different, and Helton residents already had a grudging respect for anyone who rammed the name Helltown down everybody’s throats as if he were proud of it. He was clearly taking us as we were, not as he thought we ought to be, and the sign was amusing.
Over the summer, Edwards had placed notices in the local papers, the parish magazines and on the notice boards all over the area, he had even rented a couple of bill hoardings too, all proclaiming the school was sourcing its food differently as of September. The notices informed the reader as far as possible he wanted to source food, the work force and anything else possible locally.
He invited farmers, small holders, allotment holders and gardeners to talk to Charlie Johnston about what they could offer. He had made it clear scale was no problem and the school would be happy to buy very small quantities even if on a once only basis. He had specifically stated as an example, “If you keep a couple of hens and want to sell a few eggs the school will give you a fair price each, cash for small amounts.”
He had invited anyone looking for work, be it however few hours, and irrespective of what those hours were, to talk to his personal assistant, Ruth Maguire, because he was sure an arrangement could be arrived at. Yes, this man was definitely different, and he was starting off the right way. He was well thought of before anyone had met him.
It was known Charlie Johnston, who was a well thought of, fifty year old, local butcher, would be sourcing all the school kitchen’s supplies, and he would be only too happy to buy meat on the hoof prior to slaughter. Charlie had also told a few friends to put it about if anyone wanted to sell a bit of milk, in quantity, or down to almost nothing, without their powerful, pittance paying customers knowing about it, he was willing to pay a fair price and to keep his mouth shut as he had contacts who would pasteurise it for him without saying anything.
Edwards made no secret of it that by cutting out all the middle men he could afford to pay far more than anyone else and still save money.
Charlie was a decent and easy man to deal with, and as a result of no middle men he had huge margins to play with, and he was happy when Edwards told him he could pay over the odds to someone he knew was struggling to make ends meet. As a local he could not be bluffed, and because he was a fair and honest man he was often offered food at knock down prices because he would return the favour.
Devon McDonald, a widow who farmed with her son and her sister, had offered him six tons of fanged carrots saying, “They’ve been hand sorted from the straight ones, are in first class condition and will keep, but the big buyers aren’t interested as they can’t sell them on. I’ll be happy to take anything better than beast fodder price, Charlie. I’ve a bag here for you to cast your eyes over.”
Charlie had looked at the carrots and said, “I’ll be honest, Devon, most of the kitchen staff are housewives, so it’s no problem to the school kitchens to deal with the carrots. How does seventy percent of the premium rate sound?”
Devon, who had expected twenty percent, thirty at most, replied, “Much more than fair, Charlie. I’ve about a ton of tatties in less than good condition, but if you’re interested they’re yours, and I owe you.” The deal was struck and the story soon got around, local growers and farmers were getting paid more than ever before, there was no such a thing as a glut on the local allotments any more, and the school’s food bill was down to about a quarter of what it had been.
There were no professional caterers running the kitchens. Previously caterers had tendered for the contract and the complacent caterers who had had the contract for eight years had contacted Mistress Maguire saying, “Unless we have it signed, sealed and delivered within three days we can not guarantee we can be there for the beginning of term. I am sure you understand our position.”
Mistress Maguire had replied, “Yes, we understand your position, and I shall personally make sure the situation is dealt with appropriately.” The caterers assuming their heavy handed approach had achieved their ends had been very surprised when the beginning of term had passed and Mistress Maguire had not been in touch. They had contacted her to be told, “I told you I should personally make sure the situation was dealt with appropriately. It has been. Thank you for your interest.”
The kitchen staff were not professional cooks, they were mostly women with large families from the rural part of the catchment used to managing on a shoestring, and they could cook. Many were part time, attending classes as well as cooking, but they enjoyed the work and the chat and they produced good, tasty meals we enjoyed.
Because the caterers fees didn’t have to be paid, and Edwards insisted some of the savings were passed on in salaries to the kitchen staff in return for them teaching their skills, the kitchen staff were much envied by their peers in other schools.
The wholesale suppliers the school had dealt with before had been very upset at developments and had told Mistress Maguire over the phone unless the school stopped dealing with anyone other than themselves they would refuse to supply the school with anything. Mistress Maguire, who had known Edwards for years and, though about to retire, had started at Helton with him at his request, knowing what his reaction to the threat would be had put the phone down.
She had told Charlie if he had trouble wholesale sourcing anything to see finance about getting a credit card and to buy what was needed from the local discount stores because what the the school was saving by dealing with the local producers would more than cover the discount stores’ retail margins.
When the wholesaler had contacted her again a fortnight later he had been told, “We don’t do business with anyone who threatens us, goodbye.” That had soon become common knowledge to the school’s suppliers who thus had a sharp lesson in reality, money can be spent anywhere without asking for permission, and she who has the money has to be treated with respect, or she will simply spend it elsewhere.
Helltown High was no longer a publicly funded milch cow to be milked, it was now a discriminating purchaser aware of the power of its money. Much more upsetting to the suppliers had been Edwards’ insistence that their strong arm tactics and the school’s response were made public.
Eventually the bulk milk buyers became very difficult with the dairy farmers, they were not stupid and knew some milk was not being delivered to them from farms they had contracts with. The farmers explained to Charlie they could no longer provide him with milk for fear of their contracts being cancelled.
Charlie had told them to leave it with him. He had talked to Edwards and Ruth Maguire about the problem. Edwards had come up with a solution, “If all the farmers who have supplied us form a coöperative and one who produces more than we want supplies us, with no contract elsewhere, the rest can supply the bulk buyers and they can share the profits on the basis of their production. You can try to sell any surplus on, Charlie. Give it away to the kids in the dining hall it’s far better for them than pop. and there’s always Frankie who’ll take any left over for his pigs.”
It was so simple a solution, the farmers were still laughing about it, all the way to the bank, for a long time. As the number of pupils in the school increased they smiled all the more. When Charlie started selling surplus milk to staff, parents and anyone else who wanted it, the big buyers offered to put their prices up, but it was too little and too late, the farmers had a developing retail market that paid them a fair price. One by one the dairy farmers of the coöperative entered the retail market, and it wasn’t long before others joined them. A couple of years later they got a grant to build their own dairy and creamery.
Charlie had applied for a licence to pressure cook the slops from the school dining hall prior to passing them on as pig food. The conditions were severe, and the cooker expensive, but he had specified when it would be in operation and insisted the cooker and its even more expensive computerised data recording system records, which recorded pressure, temperature and the time at regular intervals, would be open to inspection at any time, and he’d been granted the license to operate the system on Frankie’s farm.
The slops from the school had been negotiated in advance to Frankie ‘the pigs’ Ogilvie who provided cereal grains to make up any cooker load that wasn’t full, and who in return supplied the school with pigs at a very reasonable price. Charlie, who was enjoying his job as butcher and sourcer for the school kitchen far more than just working as a butcher, made it clear to the abattoir he wanted everything from the animals they sent in, heads, feet, blood, offal, guts, the lot. He told them if he didn’t get everything, other than anything condemned or not permitted by the meat inspectorate, he would use another abattoir.
The result was he got what he had wanted, but his cooking staff told him to buy a commercial mincing machine, sausage making equipment and a few other bits and pieces so they could use it all. He approached Edwards about their requests who told him, “Charlie, I trust you to do your best for the kids, you have no need to tell me about it unless it’s more than shall we say five, no make than ten grand in a month, okay? Just keep Ruth informed, she’ll be able to spread the cost so we can manage.”
Charlie had nodded, and said, “I was always worried you wouldn’t understand the cost of some things, Edwards, but after this ten grand will cover anything I ever want to buy, and once we’ve got all the expensive equipment the costs will drop to nearly nothing. I’ll never abuse the trust, my grandkids will be here soon, and I want to be here till I retire.
Edwards started as head when I was eleven when I still knew it all and more to the point I could run fast enough to get away when it turned belly up. My mum had got the letter before the beginning of term. She didn’t read too well, but she understood the bit that said there was no longer any school uniform. “That’s a relief,” she’d said, realising she would neither have to buy one, nor fill in the forms for a free one. I said she didn’t read too well, well she didn’t do forms any better in those days.
No uniform! I’d thought life was looking good, but that was illusory. I was about to work harder for the rest of my life than I even knew it was possible to work, with or without a school uniform. No more did I realise I should want to because I enjoyed it.
That first morning we resentfully shuffled into the hall expecting to be bored mindless by a speech giving us the low down on what was expected of us, and to hear a pile of meaningless threats about what would happen to us if we didn’t do as we were told. To say we were gob smacked by events would be the understatement of all understatements. The staff lined the sides of the hall, and we, the entire school, waited whispering. The air of anticipation made my heart race.
The staff shut the hall doors and a tall, heavily built, completely bald man walked onto the stage wearing, if that’s the right word, an accordion which looked like it had hundreds of buttons on both sides. I’d thought they looked like a keyboard on one side. I found out later it was a Russian instrument called a bayan. We expected him to talk at us first, but, without having said a word, he started playing. He was amazing, and then he sang whilst he played. We had no idea what language he was singing in, but he could really sing.
He’d played and sung for maybe half an hour when he was interrupted by a big blond boy who told him “This is a load of shit.” The confrontation was scary but exciting because at least nothing would happen to me, and I wondered what would happen next.
Calmly Edwards looked at him and said, “Nobody is making you stay. You may leave, but don’t bother coming back. Your parent or guardian will have your expulsion letter later today. Should you return I shall apply to the courts for an injunction which will make it a criminal offence for you to enter the school grounds. I wish you well in your future, but it is not with us. Goodbye.” He turned to a fit looking man in his forties wearing a tracksuit, we found out later he was the head of boys’ games, and said, “Please have your staff escort the young man who has no interest in his education off the premises.”
The gobshe was dragged out shouting abuse, and that was when we realised this man had a core of steel. Just how hard he was few would ever know, and I didn’t suspect for over twenty years. Edwards continued to play as though nothing had happened, and as he played the staff sang, in what we presumed was the same language. We wished we could have joined in with more than just the bits of choruses he talked us through without us understanding a word. It lasted till break, but it seemed like just a few minutes, and most of us could have listened to the singing and playing all day.
Break was a shock, it was all free. The tea was in cups with saucers, the milk was in tall glasses and the cake was on plates. I was told, “Take the saucer and the plate too, Son, or leave the the lot.” No chocolate bars, crisps, cans or bottles on sale anywhere, there wasn’t even a till. We were told we could have more if we wanted, but we had to sit down at the tables, or it would be taken off us. Since we hadn’t paid for it, we knew there was nothing we could do about it, so we sat down.
After break, we went to our form teachers till lunch, mine was a woman in her early thirties called Senhora Rodriguez who had sung a duet with Edwards. She had a nice voice, it was low for a woman, and we found out later she sang contralto, we even found out what that meant. She told us the singing had been in Portuguese, and the staff were going to teach us how to sing one of Edwards’ favourite songs, ‘A Casa da Mariquinhas’. The song wasn’t long, but it was fast and exciting, and by lunch we had managed to learn it, kind of.
Like break, lunch was a shock. We were told Edwards had said there were so many of us on free school meals it wasn’t cost effective to pay someone to collect money from the few who weren’t, so no tickets, and no being looked down on by those who paid, just get your meal and enjoy it. The food was good, like Sunday dinners at Gran’s with a pudding too and a piece of fruit you could take away for later.
It was years before it became known Edwards had just wanted us all to eat a good meal without having to worry about the cost, and he had embarrassed local suppliers of what couldn’t be farmed or grown locally into making up the difference so he could give all of us free meals, though he had always repaid the favour somehow. Edwards had said all members of staff, not just teachers, could eat in the dining hall for free as they were an adult presence, he never ate anywhere else, always at a table of kids, which became normal for all staff, teachers, office staff and site staff.
After lunch, we had a combined lesson of English and Portuguese all afternoon. We learnt about Portuguese pronunciation, the Portuguese alphabet, which had no k, w or y, but it did use some strange symbols with some letters, and we learnt what the words to ‘Mariquinhas’ meant in English, which made us feel grown up and yet very young at the same time. Then we were dismissed to go home.
On the way home, we talked about it with some older kids, and we all agreed this head was cool, crazy different, but we’d had fun. They told us Helltown High went through staff pretty quickly, some supply teachers hadn’t lasted a lesson, and most of the staff were new too.
We sang ‘Mariquinhas’ the following morning with Edwards playing and us singing along reading the words off the screen behind him. When we faltered he and the staff kept going. By the time we’d sung it a dozen times we sounded pretty good. It was the best! Edwards had once been asked why he’d chosen Portuguese rather than say French or Spanish, and he had replied, “The music.” He knew what he was talking about.
The rest of the week was more or less what we had expected except the staff spoke to us some of the time in Portuguese, a lot of them were Portuguese. Edwards had had to recruit over three-quarters of the staff in a hurry over the summer, and he had recruited entirely in Portugal. He never gave a job to a teacher who couldn’t speak Portuguese, and he interviewed them in Portuguese, one or two of them were learning English on the job.
We didn’t realise it at the time, but as the time went on our teachers were speaking in Portuguese more and more. The few staff who predated Edwards were learning too, just like the rest of us, or they chose to leave, and were replaced by Portuguese speakers.
Later in the term, our form teachers told us Charlie Johnston had asked them to ask us if he could have the surplus from anyone who had fruit trees and couldn’t use all the fruit. He wanted it for the kitchens, said he’d pay, and the cooks would appreciate a hand to prepare it for the freezers on Saturdays, again he’d pay.
There must have been a good few tons delivered, and loads of women, and a few men, came in to help the cooks prepare fruit and make pies and things to freeze. I think that’s when I started to like apple pie. I think a lot of people said to forget about paying for the apples, as they’d only have been wasted, but the money was a significant help to more than a few allotment holders with big families.
We had Edwards for singing, the staff called it assembly, every Monday and Tuesday till break all the way up to Christmas, by which time we were speaking dodgy Portuguese in lessons and writing in probably even dodgier Portuguese too. Have you any idea how difficult it is to find dirty words in a foreign language on the internet? And how much you have to learn in order to recognise you have found them and then how to use them? We studied long and hard, but we got there!
Edwards had a thing about music, and he didn’t care what we played or sang as long as we did. I got caught smoking by him once. Expecting serious trouble I was completely floored when all he said was, “James Edward McMillan, smoking will destroy that wonderful voice of yours I wish I had,” and then he walked away. Completely bowled over by him knowing my entire name, I never smoked again.
After Christmas we took the stage on Tuesday mornings, and Edwards listened to us, it was now timetabled as music. Six year eleven boys had a kazoo band, and they regularly performed close harmony barbers’ shop on comb and paper kazoos. We must been the only school in the country where you could ask a teacher for king sized cigarette papers from the stock cupboard, and be asked if one packet were enough. I learnt how to conduct and how to play the bayan, I was taught by Edwards himself, and Sophie my younger sister, the year after, learnt to play the Portuguese guitar.
The strangest thing about our school, which as a new kid I hadn’t realised, was the parental presence. We had mums and a few dads cooking, serving dinners, on duty on the corridors and playgrounds, cleaning the place, and most surprising to our mates who went to different schools, in lessons learning with us, but to those of us in year seven it all seemed very normal, even our parents learning Portuguese. We soon found out Edwards had offered lessons as well as wages for part time work and ‘kid sorting’ to our parents on an hour for an hour basis. Nobody with any brains litters a corridor when his gran has to clean it up, and there was always somebody who would blow you in.
Mikey’s dad, Wheels McCann, who was a genius with motors, had just come out after an eight stretch for armed robbery, he’d been the driver. Edwards had given him a job on the site staff, he looked after the school minibuses and everything else that had an engine, and he was the personal mechanic of Edwards’ beat up four by four truck. Well you wouldn’t seriously expect Edwards to drive a car would you?
It was Easter time when the engine finally died in the truck, and Edwards had mentioned he was going to look at another truck next Saturday to some colleagues in the staff room. Wheels had heard about about it, gone looking for Edwards and indignantly asked, “Edwards, why do you need to buy another truck when I can put an engine in her for you over the weekend?”
Edwards had left it with him, and Wheels had explained later, “I could nae get a decent replacement Japanese engine, but she’s got a late model vee-eight Chevy from a rear end shunt in her now, and she runs like a sewing machine. I had to chop a bit out of the bonnet and do a panel beating job on it for the air intake, and she looks a bit of a mess the now, but I’ll do the bodywork next weekend, and while I’m at it I’ll tidy her up a bit, I’ve got some paint I can fade it all in with.”
“Thank you. What do I owe you, Wheels?”
“Just pay me for the ten hours and forget the bits and pieces. Blackie at the fabrications works plasma cut the conversion plate for nothing when he heard it was for you.” He apologised, “Sorry about the labour, Edwards, but it took a bit of time to make the engine and gearbox marry up. I’d adone it for free, but I need the money.”
“Of course. But what about the engine?”
“When Brian at the scrapyard heard it was for you he gave it me. He picked it out himself, said it should be good for at least another hundred and fifty thousand miles. He’s got four kids in the school. I shouldn’t open her right out if I were you though, the brakes, suspension and steering aren’t really up to a ton forty-five, and she’ll do it. I know. I give her the full wad on the motorway last night.”
He smiled at the memory, “There’s a blue and yellow XF Jag out there probably still trying to catch me. It’s a good job nae a one of ’em can drive.” [An XF Jag was a high performance motor car manufactured by a company called Jaguar, and many police cars were identified as such by a blue and yellow check colouration in those days.]
“Blackie’s got children here?”
“Nae, but he’s three in the juniors. His eldest is in year six, she’ll be here next year.”
Edwards hesitated a little before asking, “You said you needed the money. You could do with a bit of advance salary, Wheels?”
“Hell no! She gives me beer money and deals with the rest. I’ve stopped smoking, it was stupid what I was spending on snout, and she says we’ve never been this well off. But thanks for the thought, Edwards. It’s just Mikey wants his own horn, and seeing as ahow well he’s coming on with it and the trouble he’s no getting into any more, we’ve told him as soon as we can afford it we’ll buy him one.”
“Talk to the music staff, Wheels. They’ll be able to get him the right one, cheaper than you could, and the school won’t pay VAT on it.” [VAT was the acronym for value added tax, a twenty percent tax levied on virtually all goods which organisations like schools paid, but subsequently recovered.]
“That completely square, Edwards? I don’t want you doing anything you shouldn’t ought to. She’d kill me if anything came of it.”
“Yes, it’s completely legal. Mikey’s the best French horn player in the school, so we have a competition, he wins and gets a horn as the prize. The arrangement between us to pay for my truck is a completely separate transaction.”
“Mikey’s the only horn player in the school, Edwards.”
Edwards smiled. “Ah ken that, so he’s bound te win isn’t he?”
Wheels had thought deeply before continuing, “She said you were teking on, and te go and see about a job when I came oot. She would nae have had me back if you hadn’t given me this job, and I’m burnt toast if I ever get into trouble again. Greetin’ like a Christmas card, she telt me the last time she visited when I was inside she’d promised the kids if I didn’t get a job and start being a proper dad to them, she burn me and get them a real dad. I know I’m no clever, but she’s a decent lassie, and she’d cut her own heart out before she’d play me false. I know they’re my kids, and I care about them. I owe you. If you ever need something doing, and I’m no fasht how square it is, you let me know.”
Edwards, ignoring the tears in Wheels’ eyes, replied, “Aye, ah ken. Eleanor telt me I could tell you when I felt it was appropriate, Wheels, so I’m no talking out of turn. She came to see me begging for a job for you when you came out, so she could take you back and keep her word to the kids. You’ve a gey guid woman there. I don’t see it you owe me personally, just make sure you pass the favour on to someone who needs some serious help sometime.”
Wheels had nodded, thought and said, “I’ll do that, but I still owe you a big one. You just remember what I said. Square or no, if you ever need a favour, no matter what. Don’t bother to answer now, least said the better, just remember that if someone’s a problem you tell me about it. How do I pay the school for the horn, Edwards?”
Edwards had grinned and replied, “I’ve no idea, but I’m sure Ruth will know of several ways it could be done, all perfectly legal.”
Most of that conversation eventually became public knowledge because someone in Helton Labour club on the outside of one too many was reluctant to concede Edwards was the man he was reputed to be, and Wheels with his arm around Eleanor told the story to a hushed crowd concluding with, “Doing it that way saved me about six hundred quid. Ruth Maguire told me as music had paid for it to put the money into their collection box to buy instruments for the school. I can’ae believe I actually put a grand into a charity box.” That was greeted with a lot of laughter, but it was agreed it was the perfect solution to difficult problem.
Wheels added, “Edwards is as straight as a die, an a better man than any o us in here, an anyone who doesn’t agree wi me can come outside to talk about it on the car park.”
Eleanor had added, “Anyone who wants to take him on had better realise my old man can fight as good as he drives, an I’ll be there to make sure he kicks it out o anyone who badmouths Edwards.” There were no takers. [It was many years before Wheels told me of his his offer to Edwards.]
It was not long after that when Wheels asked Edwards if he would allow him to buy him a drink in the Helton Labour club. Edwards had willingly agreed, and it was with pride Wheels had announced, “Many o ye know o hem, but ah’d like fu ye all te met Edwards frae the school who’s here with me for a drenk. I hope te be able te persuade hem te bring Mistress Edwards next time.”
Hand shakes impeded their progress to the bar, but eventually they arrived and Jim the steward, said, “Ahm Jem. We’ve a case o twenty year ald Scapa an a few bottles o duty free Aquavit i ice off one o the fishing boats led in ready fu this day, Edwards. Well ye tek a dram an it pleases ye?
“Thank ye kindly, Jem, that ah well. Ah’ll gi the Scapa a trial an test th’ Aquavit after.” All this in high style. Jim, originally from Dingwall, poured the dram, the full quarter bottle hospitality demanded, and when the taxi was called Edwards’ reputation was established by the two empty bottles and the third broached behind the bar.
He’d had to help Wheels home. Eleanor admitted to her friends later with pride Wheels had come home steaming after a session with Edwards in ‘the Labour’. Edwards did take Amalia his wife to the Labour club, and he had never been allowed to pay for a drink for either of them. He was from far away, yet he had become the honoured local.
Wheels became one of the tutors on the vehicle maintenance option, enrolled on the basic literacy course and he was in my class for Portuguese. That was typical of the way the school worked. Edwards didn’t so much think out of the box, his vision didn’t even acknowledge the box existed, and because he didn’t, nor did anyone else.
None of us knew just how many of the girls were pregnant or had kids, it was a lot, but Edwards knew, and he even knew their babies’ names. A lot of the girls didn’t want to go back to school because of the grief they thought they may get. Edwards visited each and every one of them with a request they came back to school with their babies and took advantage of the school crèche.
His line was simple, “You’re a mum, so? We all had one! Come to school, and learn how to care for your baby with the crèche nurse. She’s an expert, she should be by now, she’s reared six. In any time you have left over you can go to classes, but the most important thing is to learn how to be a good mum.” One by one they all came back to school and they kept coming back.
By Christmas they were in classrooms with their babies and confident enough about being a mum to nurse them in class, in the dining room or anywhere else. Nobody bothers about that here, it’s not like it is farther south, though how the English put up with screaming babies does puzzle us. Since the girls were all in school by then the senior crèche nurse had arranged with Helton Medical centre to hold an antenatal clinic and a mother and baby clinic at school.
Edwards had made it crystal clear to the entire school that since it took two to make a baby, he would not be impressed by anyone who gave a mum a hard time. Ah’ll no be imprest by was his warning phrase it was not wise to ignore. Respect for and good manners to all was his rule. Edwards had respect for us and good manners to all, and he demanded them in return, not just for himself, but for all, because he said that was the only way we should ever achieve self respect.
A lot of us arrived at school early so we could have a free cooked breakfast. Edwards had done a deal with the supermarkets for near sell by date food in exchange for encouraging us to go bag packing, trolley collecting and the like at the week ends. He was absolutely straight with us about it, and he said there was no such thing as a free breakfast, and if we wanted breakfasts to continue we needed to pay back the favour. He was the man, so we did, and we had a lot more fun doing that than just dossing about Helton.
The tips for carrying bags back to cars we decided to put into a pool to buy some new musical instruments, so Edwards got us some collecting tins and some year ten kids designed and printed the labels in computer studies. We collected much more money after that. Mikey’s brother Billy, who was in year nine, had pushed some old dame’s trolley to her car and unloaded her shopping into the boot. She’d bunged him a quid, and when she saw him put it into his tin had asked him in astonishment, “You go to Helton High?”
He’d replied, “No lady, we all go to Helltown High,” pointing to the label on his tin. We had a good laugh about that because we reckoned she’d expected us to have two heads or something.
It wasn’t long before we’d raised enough for the school to buy us the absolutely top of the range virtual button accordion we’d dreamt of. After that minor miracle we decided anything was possible, Edwardsitus was very contagious, and we wanted a recording studio. So, we took turns to play and sing on supermarket car parks.
I had a whale of a time composing, arranging and conducting music and songs for us to perform. Staff from the school came down from time to time to enjoy the experience of blowing the minds of people who had rarely if ever listened to live music before, and certainly not live music performed by the likes of us, but most enjoyable for us was when Edwards came to listen, sing and play. Solos, bands, orchestras and choirs, classical, opera, folk, pop, rock, heavy metal, rap, and carols at Christmas, Portuguese, Scottish, English, Irish, even some Welsh and other languages, you name it, we did it.
The kazoo band had an amazing version of Yakety Sax that got on the telly, and whilst some of us played and sang the rest of us collected trolleys, packed and carried bags. It was a real earner, the shoppers loved it, so the supermarket managers loved it too, so much so they donated to the fund.
We used one of the bike sheds at school as a trolley park for the trolleys we found round the town on the way to school and the ones we pulled out of the canal too. We took them back to the supermarket they belonged to every so often where we were given car wash tokens to pressure wash the ones from the canal, and we pressure washed each other too of course. We painted moneyometers, like thermometers but shewing how much we’d raised so far, with photos of what we’d bought so people could see where their money had gone, though most of the time someone was playing what we’d bought.
Edwards was a genius at scrounging, and using the twelve grand we kids had already raised as a lever, he’d prised enough cash out of the music industry within a few months to provide us with a state of the art, industry standard, recording studio, and that’s why Mistress Maguire ran the school, he was far too busy. Edwards hired a Portuguese sound technician to teach us how to use it and look after the school’s other equipment. He’d done us proud, she sang soprano, played the viola and didn’t speak a word of English when she arrived. She married a local farmer and stayed on to produce virtually all of the music we recorded. Senhora McIntosh! Cool name or what?
Some of us went to night school too, probably just because our parents went and we were allowed to. Helltown High didn’t do adult education, it just did education, day and evening classes for all. We learnt to shop on the cheap, to cook what we’d bought, it was the school cooks who taught us that, about how to be decent wives and husbands, parents and how to change nappies too. The girls with babies were only too happy to let someone else have a go.
We also learnt how to deal with officialdom. They must have hated us once we learnt to complain in a way they couldn’t ignore, especially when they’d screwed up. We were encouraged to practice on the office staff who knew the score, it was a great game for them, and they didn’t make it easy for us. If we lost it in any way they’d just pull the glass window shut, and when we’d cooled down, they’d debrief us on how we should have dealt with it. With their help we did learn, eventually.
We learnt about the economics of renting versus owning and how to go about buying houses rented from the Council. [I heard a few years later Helton had the highest proportion of owner occupiers of any big estate in the country.] We practised job interviews, face to face and on the telephone. We wrote letters, filled in tax returns, claim forms and dozens of other types of forms. We learnt how to operate bank accounts, debit and credit cards. Edwards had experts down to advise on managing debt, he gave them office space, next to the credit union people.
By the time the year was over we could take on any of the desk jockeys and keyboard warriors without losing our tempers, which we now realised was why they had always had the upper hand before, but no more. I was, however, completely freaked out when I went home one day to find Mum reading a book. I mean Mum actually reading a novel!
Helltown High had a dance in the hall every month for kids, families, staff and friends, the place was always packed. I don’t think Edwards understood about fire regulations. The music was always live, and it had originally all been played by him. After a bit the music staff became performers too, instead of just theory pushers, but best of all as some of us had got better at playing we played dance music, which Edwards said was much better because then he could dance too. He danced with the women on the staff, mums, and the girls too, who were chuffed to bits when they’d danced with him.
It was, however, something else to see when he danced with his wife, who was a tiny brunette from Faro and more than a foot less tall than he. She never missed a dance, and neither of them could dance for toffee, but they had something going that despite the hundreds of people around them excluded them all. When they danced, they danced in their own private space. That was what brought it home to us about the power of those relationships we’d learnt about at night school. Neither of them ever said much about it, but they had been married for going on forty years which we thought was incredible, three years was a long marriage to us.
The school dance was the major social event where we lived. When the weather was good thousands came and we danced on the playing fields. I’d danced with Mistress Edwards a few times, and she was nice, normal compared with Edwards, who we all accepted was…, well…, Edwards was Edwards. I didn’t realise it then, but I had a hell of an education.
We had a Defost inspection towards the end of the summer term of my first year, we’d been expecting it for months. It was my mum, damn I was proud of her, who’d said at the extraordinary meeting of parents and kids she’d called that Friday night, “I think they’ve only left it this late in the year because in their heads they’ve given Edwards as long as possible to screw it up, so they can bust him too like all the others. They’re coming here to fail him and the school again. They’ve probably written the report already. Well, they might be able to push the governors and the staff about, but we’re a whole different story.
“Defost’s never done anything for our kids or the school, we owe them nothing. All they ever did was tell us the kids and the school were rubbish. They never offered any help or solutions just bad criticism. Now with Edwards’ guidance we’ve helped ourselves, and we have to take them on in a way Edwards can’t. The school’s too important to us all to risk, and we need Edwards. If we and our kids only talk to them in Portuguese, and they’ll have to have at least one on the team who speaks Portuguese, they can make of it what they will, but they will have to put it in their report the kids don’t just learn Portuguese, they speak it. They wouldn’t dare not to.”
Mum had been elected a parent governor at Christmas because she was well known for being unafraid to speak her mind to anyone, and she told the rest of the governors on Saturday that was what the parents and kids had decided. She told me the chair of governors had replied, “Mistress McMillan, we have no choice but to accept that, but be assured we do approve, and we will be taking what we consider to be all appropriate steps too in order to make sure Defost appreciate the abilities of the children and the progress they have made.”
By then the governors thought Edwards was the best thing since sliced bread because for the first time in its history the school was over subscribed in all year groups, instead of being quarter full with poor attendance. Discipline problems were now almost none existent, Edwards had got rid of the few complete headcases permanently within three weeks, and being a failing school nobody could make him accept other schools’ chuck outs, even had there been any places available. It looked like the battle lines had been drawn up, and we, the front line troops, were up and ready for it, the people versus the suits.
The Defost team arrived on the Monday morning to be greeted by Mistress Maguire and told, “The headteacher is preparing to take assembly which is important here and requires the presence of all the teaching staff. I have been asked to remind you you have requested the normal routines of the school are not to be disrupted by your inspection, and I have been instructed to greet you on behalf of the headteacher and the school, and to take you to the hall at half eight if that is your wish, or to provide you with refreshments, or both.” The lead inspector asked when the head would be available to be told, “At half past ten when assembly ends.”
“We’ll go to assembly please.” At half eight the team were escorted to assembly where uncomprehendingly they listened to Edwards, the staff and us singing whilst Edwards played. As always by then, all the announcements were in Portuguese. As our parents had instructed us, we spoke only Portuguese for the duration of the inspection which baffled the Defost people, they looked at the staff’s lesson plans, our books, and the notice boards, but since they couldn’t read Portuguese they were at a loss. They made notes during lessons, but since all lessons were taught in Portuguese it’s anyone’s guess what they wrote.
They came into the dinning hall first thing on Wednesday to see menus written in Portuguese on the wall and to hear us and the cooks talking in Portuguese when we ordered our breakfasts. When we were chatting over breakfast we chatted in Portuguese. Everywhere they went it was the same, even outside on the yards during break and lunch.
We knew they had been told how Edwards was running the school. Mum had been wrong, but the only thing anyone could think of to explain why they hadn’t brought a Portuguese speaker with them was in their arrogance they hadn’t believed what they had been told, which was strange since we had had a couple of local authority monitoring visits through the year.
I think the only non-Portuguese they got from the kids was at Tuesday lunch, when I was conducting a choir and orchestra in a rehearsal for a concert we were going to perform over the summer, but O Fortuna from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is in Latin so that didn’t help them much.
The only amusing thing about the whole sorry business was they had spoken to every single member of the teaching staff including the office staff, the cooks, the crèche staff and of course Wheels. On the timetables it just said Wheels and one of the Defost men had referred to him as Mister Wheels. Wheels had responded by saying, “The name’s McCann, Wheels McCann.”
When they had asked Wheels where he had qualified he had told them HMP Barlinnie, it was where he had got his City and Guilds certificates in vehicle maintenance, he’d done them as something to do, though his skills were way beyond that. From London, and never having heard of Barlinnie, it hadn’t occurred to them it was a prison and they’d assumed it was a unit in the armed forces.
They had talked at cross purposes for nearly ten minutes before they asked Wheels what exactly were his qualifications to teach. He had replied, “You can’t drive a get away car at nearly two hundred miles an hour on the basis of a piece of paper. I don’t think we’re going the same way round the track here. I’ll try to make it easy for you. I’m not a teacher. I’m a part time tutor, the rest of the time I look after the school’s motors. I’ve done more of my life inside than out, most recently I served eight years for armed robbery, but the police check said there was no reason why I shouldn’t work with kids. They call me Wheels because of the way I can drive. I can make any engine you give me run as sweet as a nut. I can barely read and write English, but I’m learning and I can speak dodgy Portuguese. The kids know I can teach and that I know my stuff. They want to learn about motors, and nobody gives me any shit.”
Wheels had meant the kids didn’t hold it against him he wasn’t a qualified teacher. That he’d done time was a matter of no consequence at all round Helton. After music, his go-cart club was the most popular after school activity in the school, but the two Defost people subsequently complained to Edwards about his staff threatening and trying to intimidate them.
After his interview Wheels had been relating events to Edwards and colleagues in the staffroom and with tears of laughter rolling off his cheeks he’d said, “I’ve wanted to say, The name’s McCann, Wheels McCann, to someone since I nicked my first car.”
Edwards started laughing, “What’s so funny about that?” he had been asked.
Barely able to speak, Wheels had choked out, “The name’s Bond, James Bond.” Some of the staff, like Edwards, thought it to be hilarious, most didn’t, but it clearly had made Wheels’ day, so they were happy for him. Mikey’s brothers made sure the entire story was public knowledge within two days.
We found out afterwards at assembly direct from Edwards that the report was not going to be good, but he wasn’t worried, and said we would just have to sit it out till the exam results. He told us Defost had told him they were most dissatisfied with the total lack of coöperation from the parents and the pupils. They considered his ability to select staff left a lot to be desired, they also considered there was a certain lack of delicacy about the school, and they had to consider Helton still to be a failing school since they had been presented with no evidence to the contrary and they were unhappy about the curriculum.
Clearly a full school with good attendance, no behavioural issues, bilingual estate kids, and an active two way and effective community rôle they did not count as evidence. Edwards had been puzzled by the, certain lack of delicacy, and their concerns about the curriculum, so he had pressed them to explain. They hadn’t wanted to, but backed into a corner by an insistent Edwards, it appeared one of the two women inspectors had seen a group of girls, some of who were pregnant and some of who were nursing in a corner in the library. Then she had noticed girls nursing all over the place, and she hadn’t been able to handle it.
She had said something about indelicacy to some nursing girls and upset them. One of their friends had been so indignant on their behalf she had been foul mouthed enough to put the inspector to rout. Edwards had told them since no one was bothered about nursing mothers here, and since the girls were in school and learning he thought, as people from a long way away, they should respect our customs. He was not happy they were upsetting his young mothers, whom he had worked hard with to get them to return to school, and he had no intentions whatsoever of taking any action against whoever it was who had put the inspector to flight, since he approved of her stance if not her language. We all knew that was exactly what had happened because Edwards told us.
There was no mention of it in the report which was published just before the NQSE results. [NQSE was the acronym for National Qualification in Secondary Education. A long abandoned and discredited academic qualification awarded in a specified subject, usually taken in about ten subjects by pupils aged fourteen to sixteen. It was graded G to A, Cs and above were considered to be pass grades.]
The inspectors’ concerns about the curriculum seemed to centre on Edwards using and paying any and all adults in the school as part-time teachers, especially Wheels, the cooks and the office staff. That was the measure of Edwards, no matter what, he told us what had happened, all of it. The report was grim reading, and it bore no resemblance to the reality that was our school. We were all feeling depressed by it, but Edwards kept smiling and saying, “Wait for the exam results, everything will be fine.”
The suits must have felt like complete idiots when, on the Thursday, every kid in the school, other than the special needs kids, and even they got a grade, from year nine upwards, got a C or better in Portuguese at NQSE that summer, loads got A s, and the school got a brilliant report from the examiners concerning the quality of the speaking and listening tests. The rest of the examination results put us just below the middle of the good schools, and that was unarguably evidence since we were the most improved school in Britain.
Wheels had told Mikey they would sit NQSE Portuguese together as he reckoned he would be able to do the written papers by then.
The school never really shut because there were all kinds of activities going on there all year round, even on Christmas day it had been open to any who lived on their own or who had nowhere to go for a decent meal and some company with a dance and a drink or two. The weather was brilliant sunshine, and the celebration party and dance on the playing fields that August Saturday started after lunch, not in the early evening as was normal, and it could only be described as massive and emotional.
Edwards had told Charlie Johnston he wanted all Helton to share our triumph because without the support of the entire community the school would never have been able to do it. He’d also said, “Never mind the cost, Charlie, I’ll find the money somehow,” which had raised his prestige even higher, if that were possible. In fact it had cost very little as donations in kind and money poured in, even the marquees were on loan.
Charlie had hired the biggest barbecue sets ups I’d ever seen, and Frankie the pigs and his mates, who were wearing huge, white chefs’ toque hats, and even bigger smiles, as they basted and tended the meat, had been spit roasting quarters of beef, whole pigs and sheep, and drinking, since the day before. Frankie had explained to everyone with extraordinary bonhomie it was hot and thirsty work, and if they wanted a bottle they were on ice round the back with the tin for the money. Jim from the Labour was making sure they didn’t run out of beer or ice, and would be be bringing some barrels and chiller units down later.
The cooks had been cooking since daylight, and there were tables on the field borrowed from houses all over Helton. Wheels and his mates had been touring the area with loud speakers on the school minibuses inviting all to join in the celebrations, collecting those who needed a lift and tables too. Everyone who could contribute did, and it made the Bankirk carnival look like a rather shabby affair.
With Edwards’ guidance and encouragement we’d come to believe it could be done, and we’d done it, the exams were just the way to measure it, but we, the school and Helton itself, had taken our first serious steps to be taken seriously, and we’d stuffed the suits, and that was sweet, very sweet. The governors’ complaint concerning the inadequacy of the inspection team to inspect a school they had known operated in Portuguese and their lack of sensitivity to our customs which had led them to upset vulnerable young mothers was subsequently upheld and if anything that was even sweeter.
The discrepancy between the Defost report and the exam results coupled with the upheld complaint, [relatively few complaints against Defost were upheld], was too much for even the minister of education to swallow. The media, who previously had never had a good word to say about Helltown, changed sides and had a field day. The managements of the other schools in Bankirk were said to be in a state of shock when their next year’s year seven intakes started to shrink as some parents decided Helltown High was a better bet, and changed their minds. They all shopped in supermarkets and were familiar with Helltown High kids, our music and our language abilities, and by then they knew we didn’t have two heads.
Even before we were officially no longer a failing school, Edwards appealed for money to build a new and massively bigger hall. “For the dances,” he explained. The money poured in, initially from parents who had little to give, but who ran bring and buy sales and other fund raising activities. Then the moneyed people jumped on the bandwagon hoping to get something out of it, they did, Edwards thanked them publicly because he was always polite. Work on the hall started that year, and it was finished in five months.
The school was bursting at the seams with kids. Edwards had ignored the legal situation, and by the time that it was discovered he had accepted every kid whose parents had applied it was too late. The dozens of old shipping containers Edwards had scrounged via contacts at Glasgow docks had one by one been turned into warm and comfortable offices in a three storey office block, by dads and friends of the school, who amongst them had all the skills required. It had taken a bit of time to scrounge everything needed, including the paint to make them look good, but it had been done for virtually nothing. By the time it had been realised they had no planning consent the school had enough influence to obtain retrospective consent. They were used by people like the office staff, the credit union and the school nurse, and they freed up a lot of rooms in the main school that were then available for teaching in.
Edwards had known he had leukaemia when he took the headship, it hadn’t been long somehow before everybody knew, and he spent the last year of his life finding us a head who was in his words, “Worthy of the school my kids have made.” The chemo only postponed what was in those days inevitable, and he died suddenly one weekend when I was in year nine. We were gutted, but the school didn’t close for even half a day, that would have been contrary to everything he believed in.
Mistress Maguire was still running the school, and Senhor da Silva, the senior deputy head, took over the headship. It was a seamless transition. Senhor da Silva was Brazilian, he’d been with the school for two terms, and he was Edwards’ choice of head. He was a decent man who ran the school the same way because he believed it was the way it should be run, but, though he sang tenor and was brilliant on the Portuguese guitar, he wasn’t Edwards. He made one very significant and immediate change. To honour the man whose dreams, vision and sheer bloodymindedness had made it all happen, he had the governors officially change the name of the school to Helltown High, which we all knew would have amused Edwards. The governors asked Mistress Edwards to take a seat as a lifetime governor of the school, and she had accepted.
When I was in year ten, Mikey’s mum and mine stood as independent candidates for the Council in the two Helton wards, and wiped the floor with the rest of the field.
Mikey got an A in Portuguese in year eleven and Wheels a B. Wheels had had to give a speech at the by then traditional community results party, and it was a good speech because he could speak. The most powerful thing he said was, “I wish my mate Edwards could have been here to share this with me. Me, Wheels McCann, a Helltown gaol bird teaching in a top school with a NQSE in Portuguese! Any of you kids who think learning is hard, you’re right, but that’s no excuse for not doing it. Five years ago I could barely read or write, now I can do it in two languages.” Eleanor, Councillor McCann, with tears streaming down her face kissed her ‘old man’ to the heartfelt cheers of the crowd who respected them both more than either of them would ever be aware of. To the day they died neither of them ever thought of themselves as anything other than ordinary people who had been lucky enough to be friends with special people. Mistress Edwards was still going to the dances when I left school.
After completing my doctorate in music at the university of Lisbon, I trained as a teacher in Porto, where I taught for a year at Helltown’s twin school, in English. I had married when at Porto. I was much in love, but we’d been married less than a month when my wife was killed in the May by a drunk driver who was banned from driving for three years. I think they’d have gaoled him if I’d wanted it, but it wouldn’t have brought her back. I couldn’t stay in Porto where everything reminded me of what I had lost. I went to teach and play in what had been the Soviet Union, [a super power state on the Eurasian continent that existed between 1922 and 1991 whose capital was Moscow], where the bayan is better appreciated than anywhere else in the world.
It’s true what is written: This too shall pass, but I had changed. I had lost my youth and acquired hard edges. It was at Kiev I met my second wife, Maria, who was a Portuguese postgrad. I’d thought I was good at languages, but she spoke twenty odd fluently and had a working ability in forty more. My consolation was she loved music, and it was my musicality and singing that had attracted her. Before we left Kiev for the Crimea we had two daughters and were hoping the one just conceived was going to be a son. I was in the the Ukraine and the Crimea for six years, and the only time we had come back was for Sophie’s wedding to Mikey.
The politics of Bankirk had changed since I was at school, once a see-saw power struggle between the conservatives of the affluent south and the labourites of the poverty stricken and out of work north, Bankirk has had a massive majority of independent Councillors for years, mostly because voters from all wards of the town could see what Mum and Eleanor McCann had achieved initially for their community, but as it slowly spread to benefit the entire town they wanted some more of the same. The Council now listens to and actually represents the electorate, turnout for local elections is the highest in the country and the running costs of the Council are minimal. Tax payers’ money no longer evaporates into on costs.
The area has attracted employers and even the less affluent residents, who still live in the north of Bankirk, are prosperous and in employment. It is commonplace to hear Portuguese being spoken in the town these days. There are many exchange schemes between Bankirk and Porto, not just between the two schools’. Criminality is still with us but on a vastly reduced scale, and there are many persons and organisations working hard to reduce it further still. The political organisations of the county are gradually becoming infiltrated by independents too as Bankirk is seen to be better run than the rest of the county. That it provides a wider range of excellent services for the electorate for a much lower rate of local taxation is never out of the media.
None of which explains why at thirty one I’ve just been appointed as the youngest and least experienced headteacher of a big school in the country. Helltown High, which now at over six thousand pupils is away the biggest school in the country, has a sixth form that also teaches in Portuguese. I only applied because Wheels would have played hell with me if I hadn’t. Despite his assurances, I had been amazed I was even short listed since the competition was a strong field with many experienced and high performing heads from all over the world, including Portugal and Brazil, all wanting the extremely lucrative job at the most prestigious bilingual community academy in the country.
The feeder primaries have been teaching Portuguese for over ten years, and Helltown juniors and infants, now on the Phoenix site, both teach in Portuguese. The numerous play groups for pre-school children funded by the Helltown Regeneration trust are all bilingual.
As I understand it, the things that eventually counted with the governors were, I was one of Edwards’ kids from day one, and though I’m my own man I am a firm advocate of his belief a school and its community should be inextricably entwined. I’m also a good bayan player and I love fado, but perhaps most of all I wanted the job, and I didn’t care about the salary. I’d have taken the job for the pay of a head of modern foreign languages. It was only after I had been appointed it was pointed out to me I hadn’t even raised the issue of salary.
When I’d been asked what should my reaction be to allowing the local authority to play a rôle in the running of the school, I’d replied, “If you are informing me that is about to happen then I should like to withdraw my application because I have no desire to be a cardboard cut-out fronting for an organisation that failed the kids of Helton, and I was one of them, for at least half a century, and I’ll be damned before I allow the likes of them to have any input into the education of my kids, they’ll do better if we stay in the Crimea.”
That was the first time any of the governors smiled, albeit bleakly, and at that point I thought it was all over for me, believe me bile has a bitter taste. However, they had continued and asked me what my priority should be were I to be offered the post. Thinking I had nothing to lose I told them the unvarnished truth, “To find a Portuguese speaker able to fill Ruth Maguire’s shoes and run the school for me while I scrounge the money to replace the current young mother, toddler and baby unit, and begin the major projects Edwards talked about but didn’t live long enough to make a start on. But I should like to know what lay behind you asking me about my reaction to local authority involvement in running the school.”
It turned out they had wanted to find out how strongly I felt about the school’s independence from the local authority or indeed any outside body. Well they found that out all right. That I recognised what was truly important to the kids of Helltown High in a head, and it wasn’t running the school, was I believe why I got the job. In the meanwhile I’ll enjoy playing and singing for the dance at the Helltown Edwards Hall on the first Saturday of September, opening with the Helltown anthem, ‘A Casa da Mariquinhas’, and I’ll be dancing in Edwards’ shoes with my now very pregnant Maria, it’s another girl by the way, in our own space.
Edwards had left a blueprint of his vision of where he would have taken the school had he lived. It was only for the eyes of those who needed to know. I only saw it after I had been appointed headteacher, and it was so sound it had been followed with very little need for modification due to events as time had unfolded. A dreamer and a visionary, yet rooted in reality, he had realised Helltown had suffered not only because the oldest school in Bankirk, had had the by then meaningless cachet of being derived from the old grammar school, but also because Helltown had been based on a badly managed, if not to say bungled, amalgamation of two rival secondary modern schools, whilst the remaining secondary modern had survived relatively untouched and unscathed by educational changes.
Edwards had written, and here I am only taking extracts from the long document I am sure you are familiar with, the explanatory material in square brackets is mine.
It is unfortunate, but we must take them [the other two schools] over, or we risk them eventually regaining the upper hand again, and all our children have struggled so hard to achieve will be lost and not available to theirs [their children]…. It is simply an us or them situation…. We must lose no opportunity, however small, to wrong foot them…we shall succeed because they have become complacent and will continue to belittle and underestimate us.
It is in our interests to allow, nay encourage, them to do so for as long as possible. We must grow, or we shall die…. We must remain full…they are forced to take all the most challenging pupils which will eventually help to break them. We must take every legal opportunity, and indeed every other opportunity that arises that can not be undone as long as it will eventually cost us little, for us to expand. Their sites are surrounded, and they can not expand and ours is not…we must acquire the derelict industrial site to the west of the school ready for the time when we have the money to build on it. We can use the warehouses as security for any loan.
It will need to be carefully…toxic materials…invest in advance in technology that can deal with the toxicity…done in secret. Our activities are regenerating the area…land prices will rise. We need to have acquired the entire [industrial] site before that happens. As soon as we can we must build our own pupil referral unit, a much larger unit than we could possibly need ourselves…it must be able to provide for the entire town for at least twenty years, better fifty…with ours built they [the other schools] will never be able to raise funding for another…we can drain the other schools financially for taking their challenging pupils who will remain on their rolls not ours…not affect our examination statistics.
Eventually they [the schools] will start to fail…the educated and affluent parents from the south of the town will want to send their children to us…they [the parents] will not allow anything to threaten us or allow us to fail. That process is already beginning, but the trickle will become a deluge…play the game by the current rules…we must become an excellent school…ready to take them [the children] all.
We need to make sure we can attract the best staff possible, not just teachers…professionals of every kind as well as others of other ranks…give preference to those able and willing to pass on skills not usually considered to be part of a school’s curriculum…seek competence not paper qualifications…recruit from anywhere and everywhere on the globe…focus on Brazil, and twin with a school, or better many more than one, there…exchanges of pupils and staff…we can afford to pay higher salaries…better incentives and rewards.
We need to extend our social and political contacts, and do favours we can subsequently call in. That is already natural to us as a result of our relationships with our own community. We need to encourage and support the friends of the school and the parents of our kids to become Councillors and to seek positions of influence in not just our community but in the town, the county and beyond…Helton born members of parliament.
We are already slowly turning the old warehouses that came with the school site, and were wastefully scheduled for demolition, we are lucky that didn’t happen, into a hostel for the homeless with the aid of many organisations, but we must never give up any of our ownership or control of them, nor accept any funding, nor anything else, which has strings attached that even may limit our freedom to determine our own courses of action, better to do without and to proceed more slowly….
At every opportunity we need to invest in the other schools of Bankirk, and by that I mean when they seek to raise capital by selling assets to lease them back, and they will, we need to have proxies ready to buy them up on our behalf…set up a financial arm…when the time comes we can strangle them financially…forcing them to take whatever pupils they can get.
Whenever political or social issues are raised in an educational context it must be automatic for the powers that be to consider us not them [the other schools] as the natural partners to drive such things forward…. We need to put them [the other schools] where we were, and then push them under…no mercy. Be cordial in our relations with them…must remain unaware of our attitude to them till it is too late.
We need to be a prime mover in any community based project concerning rehabilitation from crime or drugs, or indeed anything else. Give a free home to all and any organisation that seeks to improve society…Citizens Advice, Alcoholics Anonymous, Drugline, Bankirk Credit Union, Relate, The Samaritans, a comprehensive medical and dental centre if one needs a home, if not open one. We shall have the space for them, and their presence on the site will be far more valuable to us than any rent we could take off them…with a secure home they and their parent organisations will fight for us.
Build a theatre for the school…allow touring companies to put on productions…we need our own theatrical group in residence, our own orchestra…charge them nothing. Similarly…a cinema, swimming pool…first class sporting facilities…. We must start a program, our program, involving elderly care, a day care centre, weekend activities for the elderly, more involvement in care home visiting…our children have grandparents, great grandparents. To rebuild our society we must first rebuild the families that make it up…we need to have control of Helton Housing Association…directly or indirectly…able to provide housing to those we wish to attract.
Our adult education program, already the most extensive and integrated in the county, needs to be widened, we must take our message into the young offenders’ institutions and prisons, so local offenders know they have something to go to on their release, and it must give them a future away from offending…in the immediate future involve Wheels. Back to work programs and training opportunities of every kind…our work experience portfolio is the best in the country…make it better and more relevant to the the world of work…we are already one of the largest employers in Bankirk…training apprentices.
We need to build our own mother, toddler and baby unit…integrated with the school…, so our girls miss the absolute minimum of education and are not apart from their peers who will benefit from it too…again then we can drain their [the other schools’] finances for taking their girls. Our day care centre for the pre-school children of working mothers gives us golden opportunities…by the time they go to school…extend it and fund more. We need to do much more work on guiding our young men into their rôles as fathers and husbands…child care and relationships must always be core subjects for all pupils.
We must remain outside the control or influence of the local authority…become so powerful the local authority can not act with out consulting us, and by that I mean seeking our agreement…our non-participation in any scheme must effectively stymie it without further effort on our part and we need to do that once or twice with schemes that do not matter one way or the other to us just to prove it…by the time we educate two-thirds of the children in the area and are the single most influential organisation for social reform, without the title, we shall be the local authority. They [the local authority] are welcome to the title as long as they do what they are told….
When the time is right we shall need to create an umbrella charitable trust, or possibly a not for profit company, controlled by our governors and appointees. The school has done well, but from the beginning I was aware you can not turn a school around. The task is much larger and more difficult than that. You have to turn the community the school is embedded in around, …needs a common interest…and that is why we have succeeded where all others failed.
We are not far away from the point where it would be political suicide for any to move against the school because it would be seen as a move against the community itself…reach that point as soon as possible…embed ourselves further into the community and the community into us…we are one entity because we care for each other and chose to be one entity. Use the system to beat the system…become the system…their own rules are what will be their downfall…be more familiar with the rules than they…never lose an opportunity to extract money from wherever it can be extracted…a small administrative team whose only function is to seek such funding…and then be generous with it [the funding]. Never allow money to leave the community…employ locals…if needs must import outsiders to become part of our community, but give preference to ones with children for us to educate.
Never forget, this is about who wields the power and nothing else, and it must be us and our community…attract more members of the community onto our governors…take the first opportunity to change our board structure to exclude the political and other outside appointees. They are a liability…in the meanwhile hold unofficial meetings without them. As their influence wanes they [the local authority] will offer to share power. They will present their case as if they have something to offer, but they will have nothing to offer because they would never offer to share their power if they had any. What they will want is to share the power we shall be in possession of, power can not be shared by persons or organisations with different objectives…it can only be wielded by those with the same objectives. It is a weapon and as such not to be given away to or shared with a dubious ally…let then seek their own power, and then, in the unlikely event they are successful, we must wrest that off them too.
…party politicians of all colours are just that…. …self seeking, ego massaging cronies with their hands in the till…they can not and should not be trusted with the futures of our communities and even more so those of our children. Shun party politics, but seek to dominate the politics of our community. Make alliances with similar groups in other towns and cities…help them in their struggle to determine their own futures too.
To those who read this when I am gone. This is not a work set in stone. It is a work in progress, and yours is the responsibly to make sure it does progress, and as you read it for the first time NOW is the time for you to start thinking of your successor. I never sought any of this, but having taken it on it was a lifetime commitment, and your time to make a difference may be as short as was mine. To be reading this you must have the right to because it is what you believe in, you have my blessing. …music and the Portuguese language initially gave us our shared values and aspirations, but now we share much more than that…those who are not with us and of us are the enemy…take no prisoners and leave no enemies alive behind you.
Edwards.
That fascinating document that gave so much insight into the powerfully intelligent and perceptive Machiavellian mind that had set a lost community back on the road to prosperity and self determination in less than a year went on for over a hundred closely typed pages.
It was a declaration of war against the system and a detailed analysis of what was needed in order not just to win that war, but to obliterate all opposition on our way to becoming the system. It was obvious why it was a document to be read on a need to know only basis. The remarkable thing was it relied for its success on being able to turn the greed and corruption of our opponents against themselves, if they had been genuinely interested, in an honest and open way, in the education of the children and the welfare of those who had little in their community it could not have worked. Much of it was uncomfortable reading, it looked deeply into human motivation and behaviour, and a lot of what it analysed belonged in a cesspit.
Most of Edwards’ reading of the future had been uncannily accurate, and the school and Helltown Regeneration, the umbrella trust Edwards had decreed should be formed, eventually choked the other schools out of existence, and then Helltown High absorbed what was left of them. It was a shock to most when it became known that both of the other schools’ sites had been owned for years by Helltown Investments. As an excellent school Helltown High had been allowed to take as many pupils as it had space for and continually expanding, it had eventually educated near enough every pupil in Bankirk. Where the other schools stood there are now houses.
A few months after the school based on the old grammar school had closed, its listed buildings had been torched and razed to the ground. For safety the little that remained standing had had to be demolished. Wheels had shrugged his shoulders and remarked, “Could have been anybody. They had a lot of enemies not just in Helltown. Better a fresh start anyway,” and that was all anybody got out of him. He was having a drink with Eleanor and dozens of witnesses at the time of the fire, but, known as the Tzar of Helltown, everyone knew nothing happened in Helltown without his at least tacit approval, and he heard about everything that happened anywhere in or around Bankirk eventually.
The belief was someone from outside the community had done him a favour. People may have believed he’d had nothing to do with it if he hadn’t had such a cast iron alibi, but, knowing he left nothing to chance, it was all a little too convenient. Eleanor had said tersely when asked what she thought, “I know better than to ask questions I’ll never get answers to.”
When Helltown Investments, the trust’s financial arm, sold the school sites to Helltown Developments, whom it owned, it made a very good return on its investments, and once the sites were developed that particular phase of our struggle was over. Even the most resilient of our opponents, who had not given up trying to resurrect the schools even when planning permission for the houses was granted, by a planning sub-committee dominated by our friends, had to give up at that point.
The sale of the expensive Grammar School Grove houses, all of which incorporated some of the granite from the listed buildings in their frontage, gave the trust the liquidity it needed to continue with its other activities. The subsequent sale of the only marginally cheaper, but more numerous, School Demesne houses on the other school site gave the trust the wherewithal to safely accelerate the negotiations for the entire industrial site next to the school.
The site, bounded on its long side by the river, which seepage from the long disused factories was still rendering inimical to just about any form of life, was in excess of ten thousand acres, near enough two miles wide and eight long. It had eventually been bought for a song with the condition the purchaser was responsible for the removal and disposal of all the asbestos and other hazardous materials on it, including the river pollutants the Environment Agency had been regularly fining the owners for discharging.
The vendors, who had failed to sell the site in small lots due to potential dangers from adjacent lots, were delighted at long last they had found someone naïve enough to take on the legal responsibility for, and the onerous costs of, the clean up operation. When it became known the trust had purchased the entire site many shook their heads, though some rubbed their hands with glee, thinking it had finally bitten off more than it could chew. The perceptive didn’t, but they wondered how the trust was going to deal with the situation.
As instructed by Edwards, but unknown to outsiders, the trust had been seeking a solution to the problem for some years, and finally two years before, Helltown Developments had bought, via Helltown Investments, a controlling interest in Hazdump, a small and technologically clever Midlands firm from just outside Bromsgrove, looking for finance to enable it to grow and to relocate to bigger premises. Hazdump specialised in just that line of work. After buying the industrial site, the trust had financed the relocation of all the Hazdump staff who were prepared to relocate north and financed training programs and growth using government money. It had all been planned over a year before.
Many of the Hazdump employees were young, educated men and women with families who were delighted to find housing would be provided to make their relocation easier whether they wished to find a house of their own subsequently or not. They were also delighted to find their children were guaranteed free places at the trust funded pre-school centres as well as Helton Juniors and the High, and most started to learn Portuguese.
Wheels had spent a lot of time travelling to wherever there were gaols and corrective institutions with Bankirk inmates to talk to, and on their release he arranged accommodation in the converted warehouses if they needed it. Initially he arranged jobs with Helltown Developments, but once Hazdump really got going many of its workforce were ex-offenders, and Wheels was getting men from all over southern Scotland and northern England. Wheels kept in regular contact with those serving longer sentences because he knew that was a life line to sanity for them, and as he said, “They may be bad ones, but they’re our bad ones, and no worse than me.”
He sent them updates on developments in the area, and he had kids in the school produce a monthly newspaper, The Helltown Citizen, he could send them. Knowing they had people, especially the kids, who cared enough to wait for them to serve their time, and they would have a roof over their head and a job to go to kept many of them out of trouble. As a result a lot got out early, and it also kept a lot of families together.
Hazdump started with the river pollutants. It took them six weeks to locate the source, which the Environment Agency had looked for for years before giving up, and three months to pump out the contents of the damaged chemical lagoons into temporary inflatable plastic lagoons prior to neutralisation and disposal. After dealing with the empty lagoons, they then started at the school end of the site, and working forward at an ever increasing pace as the workforce expanded they dealt with all the dangerous materials. Helltown Developments followed them up reclaiming all reusable or saleable materials prior to levelling the site which was cleaned up in less than five years.
The entire process had created hundreds of jobs and trained people for them as they went along, all locals. The skilled and experienced workforce then continued in the same line of work wherever in the country there was work, and it looked like they had well paid jobs for life. It was not widely appreciated, or made public, but the grants available for various aspects of the trust’s activities had virtually paid for the site and its reclamation.
It was considered ironic by those privy to his writings one of the now developed sites had been of the school where Edwards had come from, and the other site was of the school that had not even replied to his job application. The heads and managers who had made his life so difficult weren’t even footnotes in Bankirk’s history. That they had done us and consequently the entire town a favour by pushing Edwards to a prominence he had never sought, and at the same time condemned themselves to obscurity, must indeed have been a bitter pill to swallow.
The Phoenix Buildings on the old industrial site, which was now known as the Phoenix Site and was grassed over whilst awaiting development, were magnificent and housed not just the newly built Helltown high school but much of Edwards’ bigger dream too, and development would be continuing for a long time to come. The Phoenix Support complex comprised warden assisted sheltered accommodation and its associated residential and nursing home, though most of its staff were employed supporting the elderly in their own homes. It was a community based care model those involved in care of the elderly studied carefully to learn from.
The profitable new retail area, The Helltown Centre, built at the edge of the site next to the Helton estates had been modelled on old fashioned high streets and Victorian arcades, much to the annoyance of the supermarkets who were desperate to have a presence on the site. Photographs of real high streets and computer generated images of dozens of potential designs had been displayed, and continually modified and added to as opinions came in. Any could have their say during the public consultation phase, but ultimately only Helton residents had been able to cast a vote.
The brewery had closed the Helton Labour club as uneconomic long since, but nobody cared because Jim, now the ancient and toothless steward of the far superior Helltown Independent Club, ‘the Indie’, which stood between Amalia Lane and the parallel Edwards Avenue, two of the main streets that ran through the Centre, was still doing business as usual, which included serving behind locked doors well beyond legal opening times.
The supermarkets had been shocked when in response to their blandishments they had been told, without further explanation, under no circumstances would any of them ever be allowed to open on the site because their ethics were incompatible with those of Helltown Regeneration.
The markets were regarded by locals as the best developments. The huge, glass roofed, indoor market, which was built of reclaimed Victorian cast metalwork, modern replica cast metalwork, and other materials from the derelict factories, looked as if it had stood there for a couple of hundred years, and the outdoor market at which produce could be bought direct from the grower was known as ‘the Farmers’ Mart’.
Visitors from far afield came to shop at the Helltown Centre and the markets, all bringing money to the area, and Wheels summed it up nicely when he said, “No one would drive a hundred miles or catch a train to visit another supermarket identical to the one they’ve got five miles away. And a supermarket would pay employees peanuts and then take the profits out of the area.”
The walled, ten acre Garden of Contemplation was where Edwards’ and Amalia’s ashes had finally been laid to rest, at her request. At the very centre of the site, it was a masterpiece of tranquillity laid out by Watanabe Funato, a Japanese parent with three children in the school. It was a popular family picnic area and visited by many in need of some peace of mind. The quiet sounds of the moving waters with the huge, tame, coloured koi carp ghosting below that would take bread from the fingers were considered to be particularly restful, even when accompanied by excited children.
The sports facilities and swimming pool were under construction and the architects were still consulting about the arts centre which was to house the library, theatre, cinema, museum and various galleries. Negotiations had been initiated to build a teaching hospital and there were tentative discussions about a university on the site. Helton was indeed rising from the ashes of the Phoenix site.
I’ve been head for half a year now and after thinking long and hard about everything to do with Helltown Regeneration and the school I’m looking forward to reading the innermost and most dangerously subversive thoughts of Edwards which I’m sure he has written because there are too many loose ends and bits missing in the document I have read for a mind as organised as his to have left by accident, but as yet no one has admitted to anything more.
One thing I am sure of is most of the governors are not privy to them, there are too many of them and such a document will be known only to a very small number, two or three, four at most, who must be able to overrule the governors somehow. I know I shall only be approached by the guardians of his entire plan when I have proved beyond all doubt I am cast in his mould. I suspect the Mistresses Maguire and Edwards would have been the original guardians, but neither are alive today, and having been abroad for so long I have no idea who their heirs could be.
Five Christmases have now gone by since I became head of Helltown High, and the entire family is at Mum’s. The family has included Wheels and Eleanor and their tribe since long before Sophie married Mikey. Neither Wheels nor Eleanor have parents alive. We had always spent Christmas day at Gran’s, but she had died in June last year. This was our second Christmas at Mum’s, and it still felt a bit unnatural. My four girls are growing up quickly, and Sophie’s kids only just behind them.
Mikey had joined the Northern symphony orchestra the year before as principal horn player. He and Sophie had moved to be near his work, and they didn’t get back often. Mikey and I had spent the early afternoon cracking and eating nuts, reminiscing and reminding each other of the things we’d done at school. I’m sure they got more outrageous at every telling. Mikey had become a carbon copy of Wheels, as hard as they come, but happy to have his wife run his life.
He told me Sophie had decided the household language should be Portuguese to make sure their kids retained it, and she had removed her trio from their first primary school, which had had a very good reputation, because they had been picked on as foreigners, and the school had done nothing about it. They were now much happier and doing better in a school with a lesser reputation, but where there were at least a dozen languages spoken in the playground. They were now becoming proficient in several Asian languages which their friends spoke, and she was encouraging both their friendships and the learning of their languages. I loved Sophie, but how on earth Mikey lived with her was beyond me, at least I was asked what I thought even if it made no difference.
It was late afternoon on Christmas day, a day for family, but I had things I had to do before next term and I’d had permission from Maria to spend a couple of hours looking at some paperwork on the kitchen table. Okay, I admit I had a glass in my hand and a piece of Christmas cake nearby whilst I was reading, but I was working.
Mum and Mikey’s parents came into the kitchen with very sombre looks on their faces. Mum said, “I have made sure we shall not be disturbed, James.”
I put what I had been reading down. I knew something was going on because she never called me James, like everybody else she called me Jamie. Wheels, who, from when I was at school, had stood in place of the dad I had never known passed me a letter and said, “You need to read this, Son.” Eleanor just smiled.
I’d recognised the very distinctive italic fountain pen handwriting on the envelope, and I knew this was what I had been waiting for, yet it was with great trepidation I took the letter out of the envelope. I read it, it wasn’t long, just three sides of standard letter paper, and the writing was large. When I’d finished I read it again. I read it three times before I looked up, stunned. After a few seconds during which time I had taken it all in, I nodded, and said, “So be it.”
Mum said, “You must have realised by now it was we three who appointed you, Jamie. There are special conditions in the constitution of the school board, one of which concerns appointments of headteachers, that are not in the published paperwork, though your appointment was unanimously agreed to by the governors.” I nodded, it was all very clear to me now how it worked. “You needed the time to establish yourself, Son.”
Without a trace of apology, Eleanor added, “And you’d been away so long, Jamie. We needed to be sure.”
Wheels shook me by the hand, clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Guid. He always said it would be you. Two days before he died, he told me you would leave us as malleable iron, and we should have to let you run your own course, but eventually you would return to us as steel hardened and tempered in the forge of life to lead us in the real fight, and in the meantime we had to be patient. His words not mine, Laddie, I don’t do poetry.” Wheels grinned, “He also said to tell you it’s only a crime if you lose, so make sure you win.”
Eleanor said questioningly, “He said you would come back to us with our battle hymn, and it would be a song of love and of hate bound more tightly together than the school and the community and with it you would win the hearts of the dispossessed and conquer all. What did he mean, Jamie?”
I laughed, a dry laugh that hurt. That Eleanor never doubted for a second Edwards could read the future and I had already composed the song was clear. With tears of pain and of resolve, if not yet of resolution, running off my face I explained. “Yes, I have written the song. I never considered it to be a battle hymn, but it is an apt and an accurate description. In the dark days after Madeleine died I raged, and had that driver been in front of me…, suffice it to say I raged. I could only retain any sanity because I sang the bleakest of fado, which suited my mood. School understood and didn’t press me to return. Six weeks after her death, I was walking by the river singing, and I found myself putting words and music together in a new song inspired by the sounds of the water as it caressed its way around the rounded stones it had spent aeons gentling before finally crashing over the falls on its way to the sea where it would rise again to the clouds to fall as rain before endlessly doing it all over again. It was a song of love for Madeleine and hate for the senseless loss of her life, not for the poor bastard driving the car, even then I knew he would have to find his own peace somehow. I sought a name for it for a long time, but in the end I just called it ‘Madeleine’. Maria says it’s the best work I have ever done.”
I went for my bayan and played and sang ‘Madeleine’ for them. I could now sing it and and retain my composure, but as the words, and I admit the gut wrenching tune, were heard by them for the first time I could see the tears on their cheeks. That was the first time, despite Maria’s words, I realised just how good a song I had written.
No longer surprised, I looked at the tear traced faces of my coconspirators. I should have known. Edwards, Amalia and Ruth had never taken the measure of people the way others did, and it all made sense. Of course Mum, Wheels and Eleanor would be the guardians of Edwards’ thoughts. Though none were educated formally, all were intelligent, deeply committed to their community and patient enough to wait for more than twenty years. But what a course we were following. I didn’t need any convincing it was the right and only way to go, as Edwards himself had said, “We grow or we die.”
A century ago if we’d been found out they’d have hanged the lot of us for treason.
I didn’t know Jamie at all well till secondary school because we came from opposite sides of Helton and went to different primary schools. I knew who he was because my mum knew his, they both went to a single parent support group called Gingerbread.
I couldn’t remember my dad because he’d been sent down for ten years when I was three. I’m the youngest of six and dad had been in and out of gaol ever since mum married him. We all knew she loved him, but she was tired of struggling on her own and she’d told us next time she went to visit him she was going to tell him to get a job when he came out and start taking care of us, or she’d have no more to do with him and find a man to be a proper husband and dad.
I’m not sure if Jamie’s mum knew who his dad was. Mum said she’d been wild when she was young, was regularly drunk, smoked weed and had slept about a bit. I do know she’d never told Jamie who he was and Jamie wasn’t fasht about it.
We became really good mates soon after we met and like brothers before long, but I’m getting in front of myself there.
I remember the day we went to Helltown High as new kids in year seven. The place was massive and a bit like a tomb because there were supposed to be three hundred and sixty kids in each year group, but there were no sixth formers at all, and only two hundred of us in year seven. The whole school only had about eight hundred and fifty who ever attended. That’s a lot of empty classrooms, and it was a bit spooky.
We were all taken to the main hall for the head to talk to us. We waited. I don’t know why but it felt a bit tense, then the head, Edwards, walked onto the stage. He was massive, not just tall, but really big and powerfully built too. He was completely bald. I found out later that was a side effect of the chemotherapy. He had a bayan, and he played and sang songs in Portuguese for maybe half an hour.
Liam O’Reilly, who was fifteen, interrupted him with a load of abuse. Edwards had the games staff drag him out and told him he was expelled. Liam lived near me, and he was in all kinds of trouble, mostly drugs, and I was glad I didn’t have to go to school with him. He was sent down not long afterwards and was stabbed in the heart after serving six months of a two year sentence.
The singing and the music were good, and the staff who were round the edges of the hall joined in too, the best bits were when we could join in too, though we’d no idea what we were singing.
There was nothing except tea and milk to drink at break, but there were loads of different cakes, you had to take the cake on a plate and sit down at a table. I still like eating cake with a cup of tea.
We learnt the words to a Portuguese song called ‘A Casa da Mariquinhas’ after break.
After dinner we did Portuguese and learnt what the words to ‘Mariquinhas’ meant, a bit racy in a way. I was surprised they told us what it was about, but we found out it was a Portuguese classic, good tune though.
I met Jamie as we were walking home and some older kids filled us in on the school.
The following morning we had Edwards in the hall again and we sang ‘Mariquinhas’ too, suppose it was better than prayers. I went to a Catholic primary, but Mum said the Catholic secondary was too far away.
It wasn’t long before we all realised Jamie was different, and I don’t just mean cleverer than the rest of us. The speed at which he could learn stuff was amazing, Portuguese, music, maths, you name it. He was the cleverest person I have ever met. No, it was something else, he had this absolute sense of what was right and what wasn’t, and he had a burning need to put right what wasn’t. One day three big kids were beating up a year eight. I was going to get a teacher, but before I could turn round Jamie was in there fighting. He wasn’t big, and he was getting a battering, so I joined in, and then in seconds there must have been about twenty little kids kicking it out of three year tens.
I think that’s when he started to become Jamie Mac. Don’t get me wrong, he was no nerd or a goody two shoes, but he couldn’t see injustice and leave it unchallenged. It wasn’t long before the big kids treated him with respect, they were frightened of him to start with because they knew if he wanted to he could raise an army of little kids in seconds. But he could no more do an injustice than he could live with one, and it wasn’t long before the big kids treated him with respect simply because he deserved it.
I wasn’t very clever and struggled a bit in some lessons, but I was above average at Portuguese, and I really enjoyed music because it was something I didn’t have to work too hard at. I tried a few instruments, and though I liked the violin it was the French horn I settled on. The one I played at school was made of a cream coloured plastic, and it sounded different from the ones I heard on the internet, it had a kind of soggy sound. I dreamt of owning my own, a silver one because I liked the brighter tone as compared with the softer tone of a brass one, but even a cheap one was over a thousand quid. Dream on Mikey! Mum hadn’t always been able to pay the bills on time.
Jamie and I had become mates, but the only classes we were in together were music and Portuguese, he was in top sets for everything, and I was somewhere in the middle for most things. We did a lot of other stuff together like mates, we used to go bag packing and trolley collecting at the supermarkets together at weekends. We went fishing in the canal for trolleys. That was always a good laugh because if one of boys we hung round with didn’t fall in someone would get pushed in, and then of course we got to pressure wash the trolleys back at the supermarket car-wash. A dozen boys and a pressure washer! I told you Jamie was no goody-goody.
We used to get tips from customers for carrying their shopping back to their cars, and it was Jamie who suggested we collect them up to buy some better instruments. We all sang and played, and the school’s instruments were mostly pretty knackered, so we drew up a list. We decided we’d aim high, a proper metal French horn, a set of harmonicas, chromatic, chord and base and a virtual button accordion.
A lot of us, like Jamie played the bayan, so that was first, the harmonicas next and finally the horn, because there was only me that played one then. It was Jamie’s idea to sing and play on the car parks. Jamie was already writing music, and he conducted as often as he played and sang. He wrote some amazing stuff which the shoppers loved, and the money poured in. Edwards managed to get enough money together for a top recording studio and hired a sound technician. We were selling DVDs when we were in year seven, which helped us to buy instruments too.
After Christmas we played in the hall on Tuesday mornings and at the monthly school dances in the hall too. The dances were open to all, and if the weather was good we danced on the playing fields.
Dad was released early and got a job at the school looking after the minibuses. It was a bit strange and strained to start with, he was Mum’s man, but I’d no memories of ever having met him before. Mum had always refused point blank to take any of us to visit him, she said, “I don’t want you ever going inside, and I’m not taking you there either.”
It was true what my elder brothers said about him though. He was a genius at fixing motors. He started a go-cart club at school. He built most of the go-carts from scrap and put old lawn mower engines in them he scrounged off the scrappies. After a bit he started teaching the upper school vehicle maintenance option. He was a bit bad tempered for a while when he gave up smoking, but he did manage to give it up, and afterwards he told me Mum and he would buy me a horn as soon as they could afford it.
He was okay, not just for the horn, he was a good dad, and it’s much better having one than not. He was like a dad to Jamie too. I got the horn towards the end of year seven, I don’t know what Dad had paid for it, but I do know the one he got was new, and it cost sixteen hundred quid on the internet. I’ve got better instruments now, but when I play for family and friends that’s the one I use because somehow for them it sounds much better than it is, warmer. The others are the tools of my trade, but that one is an old friend.
Jamie’s mum became a parent governor, and that really hotted up the area’s involvement with the school. She was a nice lady and wasn’t afraid to speak her mind to anybody. Mum had said she been a bit of a tearaway when she was younger, well she hadn’t changed any.
Since Edwards had become head the school had changed. He’d booted out the idiots and completely changed the way were expected to learn. By Christmas, most lessons were in Portuguese, and we were learning quickly. Everywhere you went there was music, kids singing, playing, rapping, and we were learning other stuff too. The school was supposed to be rubbish according to Defost, I was only a first year, so I didn’t know what it was like before, but it seemed to me to be a decent school. It was really cool being able to talk a different language, especially in front of kids from other schools, or in the town.
The older kids said they had always been treated like they were rubbish before, but Edwards treated everybody with respect. We knew he was a really clever man who in other schools would have been called Doctor Edwards, but he insisted everybody called him Edwards which seemed much cooler, more exclusive somehow.
All the non-teaching staff, as well as some of the teaching staff like Dad, were locals. Edwards had got rid of all the expensive outside contractors. He’d said to us, “We don’t need to pay someone to tell us how to mop floors, cook dinner or keep you rabble from misbehaving.” He’d smiled as he said rabble, and we knew it was in fun, he’d never be disrespectful to anyone. “I’d rather pay the money to your parents for doing what they do at home, mopping the floor, cooking dinner and sorting you lot out.”
We had parents in classrooms too. Most of us weren’t sure if that was a trick to keep us under control, or if they were genuinely interested in learning. After a bit it didn’t matter, we behaved, and they were learning.
Dad joined a basic literacy class. He told me he wanted to be able to read the car magazines. I hadn’t realised his reading and writing were so bad. I bought a copy of a popular car magazine and told him, “You read what you can, Dad, and I’ll help you with the hard bits.” The look on his face made it worth any price, far more than what the magazine had cost me. I was crying when I said, “Dad, please don’t ever do anything that puts you inside again. Don’t leave us, we love you, and we need you.”
He hugged me and rather gruffly replied, “I need you all too, Son. Don’t worry. We’re doing all right, and your mum won’t let me do anything stupid.”
School was good, but everyone started to get jumpy about halfway through the year as the prospect of the inspection loomed. It was towards the end of the summer term we were told on the Friday it would be the following week. Jamie’s mum called a special meeting of parents and kids in the early evening of the Friday.
A lot of people spoke, but nobody had anything to say that would help us till she said, “They’ve left it this long to fail the school. They’ve given Edwards as long as they can to screw it up. My bet is they’ve already written the report. Well I’m not having it. The school and our kids are doing well. It’s important to us all now, and we need Edwards to keep it going. We have to make them see how well the kids have done and how special the High is. If we and the kids only speak Portuguese for the week they will realise the progress that’s been made. They’ll have someone who speaks Portuguese with them and they will have to put it in their report.” The applause was thunderous and that’s what we were told to do, so we did.
They didn’t have anyone on the team who spoke Portuguese, and their report was awful. A lot of the women teachers, mums and the girls too were in tears over it. It wasn’t our school they’d written about, and we all felt betrayed by Defost. Edwards didn’t seem to be fasht, he just kept saying, “Wait for the exam results. All will be fine.” The exam results came out, and they were brilliant. The party on the playing fields started officially after lunch but half the residents of Helton were there by mid-morning, we danced and ate and then had a rest and then we repeated that till long after dark.
Year eight was better because we weren’t the new kids any more. Sophie Jamie’s little sister was in year seven, and Jamie became the pupil-governor, which was a new idea of Edwards. There had been six candidates, the other five had all been in year eleven, and only pupils could vote. Jamie got eighty-five percent of the votes.
Jamie and I did a three week exchange with our twin school in Porto, which was absolutely brilliant. Our Portuguese was better than their English because though they were running their school like Edwards, only in English of course, they were a year behind us. José and Manuel came over to us later in the year.
Year nine was a bad one, we knew Edwards had leukaemia, but he died suddenly one weekend. I’ll never be able to forget that Monday morning. We knew something had happened because Edwards wasn’t there and the staff all looked grim. Mistress Maguire who never attended assembly came in and went up the stairs to the front of the stage. We all knew she had been his friend for years. With tears pouring down her face she said, “It is with great sadness I have to tell you Edwards died suddenly but peacefully yesterday.”
“No! No! No! No! ” was shouted repeatedly by us as if somehow the denial could make it not true. It was a shock, and it was commonplace to find tearful girls, and boys trying hard not to be, for a couple of months. The school carried on under Senhor da Silva, but the magic had gone. Those of us who had been there for the “Edwards years”, particularly the first one when we were part of the whatever it was that had changed the school and the whole of Helton too, were always regarded as specially lucky, a breed apart, and I think we were privileged. I was grateful in years to come Jamie had been there because he more than any of us benefited from it, and then he passed that on to millions.
When we were in year ten Mum and Helen McMillan, Jamie’s mum, became Helton Councillors and started stirring things up in the Council. Several Councillors retired given the choice of that or face investigation into financial irregularities. Our mums weren’t bothered about seeing them face prosecution, but they did want their sticky fingers out of the till.
I’d started to notice girls in year ten. Most of them in our year group were changing, and I was fascinated by the bits that were changing. It was the way they walked as viewed from behind that mesmerised me, and I found Sophie’s movements particularly interesting. She’d become a big tall girl and she swayed and bounced just by walking.
It was all very embarrassing as I couldn’t avoid her, seeing as she was my best mate’s sister. Jamie had always had dozens of girls interested in him, he had a way of smiling that melted the hearts right out of them. I wished often enough I had it, but he never took advantage of it which was perhaps why it worked. He wasn’t interested in girls that way, not because he was weird, but because he had too much on his mind and no time left over. He did all the things I did, but a hell of a lot more too. Looking back, he went into politics aged eleven.
By the time we hit year eleven Helltown High was the school to go to. The school was now an excellent school according to Defost, which was a load of nonsense if you ask me because it was just the same as when I was in year seven when it was supposed to be rubbish.
I was pretty good on the horn, and I wanted to play for a career and was applying for music scholarships. I was planning on doing A’ levels including music at Helltown, but if there were money in it I wanted some.
Sophie was leading me a dog’s life, we were far enough along for everybody to know neither of us were available to anyone else, but she wouldn’t allow me to call her my girlfriend. I told Dad she seemed to be all right for a while, and then it was as if she felt she’d been nice for long enough and it was time to dish out a bit of hell. Dad grinned and said, “You’re learning, Son. They’re all like that, human for three weeks and then the hormones turn them into monsters for the other week. We just have to learn to live with it. You’re getting the advanced course in women a few years before most, but it’s the same for all of us,” which didn’t help. To be honest I’m not sure whose side Mum was on.
Dad took NQSE Portuguese when I did and was chuffed to bits when he got a B which considering he’d only been able to read and write for a couple of years I thought was far more impressive than my A.
Jamie and I did our A’ levels, we both did music and Portuguese, I did English as well, but he did double maths. It was only towards the end of my second year in the sixth form when I’d got a place studying music in Glasgow Sophie finally allowed me to call her my girlfriend after we’d spent a weekend away together. “Just to make sure you know what’s still here waiting for you to come back to,” she’d said. We didn’t talk about marriage, but we both knew it was on our minds. She came to Glasgow a few times and spent the weekend with me, “Because you need reminding.” She was always honest, and she’d continued, “And I have needs too.”
Jamie went to Lisbon to study music, the next time I saw him was at my wedding to Sophie. In between he had married and lost his wife a month later to a drunk driver. I won’t say he’d recovered from loss by the time I saw him, but he’d remarried and had two daughters. He had a doctorate in music, had qualified as a teacher and lived in Kiev, and he was different. The loss of his first wife had made him ten years older than I, and he was even quieter, more reserved as if he were afraid to be too open in case he got hurt.
He had written some fine music too, though it was a long time before I heard ‘Madeleine’, the song with which he led a nation to self determination. He always had been a bit highly strung, but now he was as tight as a lute string and sometimes looked right on the edge of sanity, but Maria, his wife, could take the tension out of him with a look or a touch of her hand. I was glad for his sake he had found her.
He was thirty one when he came back to interview for the headship of Helltown High which was now the biggest school in the country. Bankirk had changed too, it was much more prosperous, especially Helton. The school was involved in all sorts of things, which I suspected Dad to be handling the iffier aspects of. Dad was also running the Bankirk offenders’ rehabilitation program and had become an important man in the community. The Council was Independent and Mum was planning on running for Mayor. I didn’t think Jamie stood a chance of the headship at thirty-one, but he got the job.
Three or four years later, I was the one who moved away. I’d been appointed as principal horn player for the Northern Symphony orchestra, so myself, Sophie and our three moved to be nearer my work.
Jamie sent me three beautifully lyrical horn pieces he had specially composed for me which no one had played before. The first was a delightful piece, a musical nursery rhyme. There were several versions of it, the simplest of which could be played with satisfaction by a beginner, though the full version required skill. The second whilst beautiful, could only be played by a reasonably skilled player, but the third was a fiendishly difficult piece which conferred instant virtuoso status on anyone able to master it. It took me a month to be able to play it at all and another six for me to play it to my own satisfaction. It was another couple of months before I could say I had made it mine. When I took them to work for consideration as part of our repertoire I got a standing ovation for both providing such pieces and being able to play the third. I had difficulty convincing my colleagues the three pieces had been written for me by my brother in law who was a head teacher, and whilst he was a wonderful musician he did not work as a member of the music profession.
It would have been a couple of years after when I heard ‘Madeleine’ for the first time. It is the most powerfully moving piece of music I have ever come across. The lyrics tear you in half, the melody shatters you into a million pieces and then they and the subtle harmonic under music put you back together again, but walking taller than you could before.
I know the story, it was in his darkest times after Madeleine’s death when he wrote it, singing as he walked of his love for her and of his hatred for the loss of her young life. I know Jamie like few do, and I don’t doubt the story is true as far as it goes, but Madeleine’s death was the trigger that enabled him to distil his love of fair play and burning hatred of injustice into that song, the battle hymn of the reform movement.
I was always looked at sideways by musicians after ‘Madeleine’ was out in the public domain once they was realised Jamie Mac was my brother in law, and even more so when it was realised how close we were. My colleagues wanted to orchestrate ‘Madeleine’, but I was a little short with them and said, “I will have nothing to do with any tampering whatsoever with ‘Madeleine’ and shall repudiate any connection with such.” The matter was dropped.
There is really little else to say, Jamie Mac, musician, educator, politician and statesman, his life after that became public property, and it has been recorded in the most minute detail, but to me he’s still my mate Jamie, the boy who put the business end of a pressure washer down my trousers when we were eleven.
Jamie always was different right from as far back as I could remember. None of the other girls at primary school had a brother who looked after them the way he looked after me. He didn’t tell me what to do or boss me about, he just cared about me. The school all knew, and some of the girls were a bit jealous. Some of the boys tried to make something of it and called him a sissy, but he wouldn’t allow it to rile him. He calmly told them if it were a problem to them that he cared about his family then they had the problem not him.
He was clever, very clever, and his memory was a one way trap, anything that went in never leaked out, he remembered it all. I often wondered who our dad was, or even if we had the same dad. It bothered me for a while, but Jamie said, “Even if you knew, Sophie, he’s not been here for us or Mum for all this time, so what difference could it make to know his name?” Jamie was always reasonable, but still it bothered me for a while till I realised I had been creating all sorts of færie stories in my head about whoever he was, and then I too stopped bothering. We had each other and Mum.
I liked school, but year six was hard because Jamie wasn’t there. He told me all about the High, about the singing and the music and learning Portuguese. For the first time in his life he had a close friend, Mikey, and I was jealous.
Jamie played the bayan at school, and he quickly learnt to play well. When they started playing and singing on the supermarket car parks I used to go with them and had a lot of fun. It was a while before I realised a lot of the stuff they were playing and singing had been arranged, and some of it composed, by Jamie. I liked Mikey a lot, but I was still jealous of him taking Jamie away from me.
I used to go to the dances at the High with Mum, and I couldn’t wait till I was a year seven. It may have seemed strange to some how close the school and the community were becoming, but to me it all seemed normal. I was young, and after all it was our school, we being the residents of Helton. It was years before I learnt other communities didn’t feel that way about their schools. I was unaffected by the tensions of the Defost inspection and the wait for the examination results. I was aware of them, but even more aware of their release at the party after the results.
I was glad when I went to the High because I was back where I felt safe, with Jamie. I heard a CD of Amalia Rodriguez singing fado Jamie had borrowed from the school library. She had a wonderful voice, and I liked her singing, but even more I liked the sound of the music, but I didn’t recognise the instrument. It turned out to be a Portuguese guitar. Senhor Peres my geography teacher played one, and he offered to teach me. After six months the school had bought one with the money we collected at the supermarkets, and there were six of us learning.
I think the school was a different place for my year group because we’d never lived with the tensions of it as a failing school. By the time we went there it was a good school that was full. Edwards was more remote to us than to Jamie’s year and above. We didn’t realise it, but he was ill, tired quickly, and he reserved his strength for what he had to establish for those who would have to continue after his death. As a result, we were not as badly affected by his death as the older kids, but it was still upsetting.
I had a hard time of it when my periods started. I was weepy and had mood swings that frightened me. I knew I was behaving badly, but I couldn’t help it. Mum was understanding, she said she’d been similar which Gran confirmed. Jamie understood too. I had been particularly nasty to him one day, and I’d raised my hand to slap him when he caught it and pulled me to him for a hug. I struggled, but I couldn’t escape. I started to shake and then to cry. He just held me, kissed my forehead and asked, “Better now, Sophie?” I was so miserable. I loved him, so why was I being such a bitch to him? “It will get better. We just have to grit our teeth and hope we can survive it.” He smiled at me as he said it.
Of course, it’s one thing your brother knowing about something like that, but I certainly didn’t want any other boy, especially Mikey, knowing, so I was an unpredictable bitch to him regularly, without any explanations. I don’t really know how it came about I decided one day I was going to marry Mikey. I do know it was all cut and dried in my head by the end of year nine.
All the boys looked at our boobs and bottoms, but I had the distinct impression Mikey was looking at mine more than anybody else’s, which was nice. I kind of liked his masculine assertiveness, he was big, good looking and easy to control. It wasn’t long after when I made it clear to the girls he was mine, though I didn’t let him know. He was different from Jamie, and I’d always assumed I would want to end up with someone like Jamie, kind and caring in a quiet and tolerant way. Just about every girl in the school had tried to get Jamie, and I knew why, it was why I’d thought I wanted someone like him.
It bothered me I wanted Mikey who was so different. He was much harder than Jamie, but he was easy to get my own way with, which whoever married Jamie would find was completely impossible. Jamie never backed down. Mikey could be loud, Jamie never raised his voice. Mikey was definitely interested in girls, Jamie liked girls, but he was too busy to spend the time on them. By the time I was in the lower sixth I was, to put it politely, a big girl, and Mikey was going to Glasgow the following year to study music. What I reasoned was the point in having the assets if they didn’t get you what you wanted?
Decision made, I took the necessary steps to give Mikey a proper farewell, and to make sure he knew what he had to look forward to when he came back. He was definitely impressed by my assets, and it was mutual. I had never made love before. Oh sure, I’d fooled about a bit, but only with Mikey. I was surprised by his insecurity. I don’t know why, but I’d always assumed he would have had sex before. I don’t know who with, since I’d known his every move for years. Anyway, I think we were both stunned by the wonder of it. Gods, I missed him while he was away. I used to visit him in Glasgow for the odd weekend, it helped, but it wasn’t enough. I studied locally after sixth form, and I couldn’t wait for him to come home.
My wedding to Mikey was a massive affair. Wheels made it a community project, and all of Helton came. Mum had Charlie Johnston and the school cooks sort it. Charlie had said, “Any excuse for a good dance will do me.”
I think I freaked Mikey out a bit when we went to bed that night. I had got an ashtray and a cigarette lighter specially for the occasion. I took my packet of contraceptive pills out of my handbag, ritually set fire to them in the ashtray and said, “Now you’d better make love to me like you mean it, McCann.” I thought I’d put all the worry about not knowing who my father was behind me years ago, but obviously not because after I got married being able to call Wheels Dad gave me a sense of contentment I can’t begin to describe.
Jamie had gone to Portugal to study music years ago, and the first time I saw him after he had gone was at my wedding. He looked awesome, haunted, elemental, wild and powerful, as if what he had suffered had taken him beyond pain and anyone’s control and he had the world in the palm of his hand and was quite willing to crush it in his fist. The friendly boy brother who had left came back as a dangerous man, whom other men of all ages deferred to. His face had aged, hardened and he had a measuring look in his eyes. Widowered at twenty five, he had remarried and had two lovely little girls. Maria told me he still had nightmares about the death of Madeleine and was walking a tightrope with the abyss of madness on one side and of suicide on the other. I had to ask, “Given that, what on earth decided you to marry him, Maria?”
She took her time replying, “I can tell you really love him, not a love of sibling obligation, but a love that needs no justification.” I nodded. “So do I. I see things in the future, it’s a gift and a curse. He has things to do that are important to many, and to do them he needs me to keep the demons at bay. I know you don’t understand, but you will in time. He is the loving father of my girls and the most important thing in my life. I need him too, but before he is done millions will need him.”
She was right, I didn’t understand, and I was sceptical about the psychic. She was also right when she said in time I would, and I’m not quite so sceptical any more.
The next time I saw him was when he interviewed for the headship of the High. Mikey didn’t think he’d get it, but somehow I knew he would. Mum said he was Edwards’ heir and the other heads had just been filling in while the time Jamie needed to make himself in passed. Well, maybe that’s where he got his mysticism from.
Not long after I was overjoyed to find I was pregnant, and not before time. We’d been trying for a long time, and I was getting worried. I loved being pregnant, though towards the end it did make playing my guitar difficult, and I love being a mum. I think pregnancy suits big girls somehow. Some of my happiest memories are of being watched nursing by Mikey. The look on his face touched me in the same way nursing did.
Mikey was good about money, and he told me if I were prepared to take the drop in income he’d be quite happy if I didn’t go back to work. Mikey’s too easy going by half. I went back to work for just long enough to keep the maternity money, and then I handed in my notice and worked it on the sick. I had another boy eighteen months after and a girl two years later. I would have liked another, but, was advised against having any more. When Mikey was offered the post of principal horn player for the Northern, what I’d been earning working from home was peanuts, and we moved away to be nearer his work. We were both happy for me to be a mum and housewife. We got back home as often as we could, maybe four times a year.
I don’t know what other people thought about Jamie’s political career and his overthrow of the entire political system to replace it with a system where decision making was done by those most closely involved and the suits became public employees rather than petty dictators, which led to a lot of them leaving the country, but to me there was an inevitability about it.
I’ve heard ‘Madeleine’ played and sung thousands of times and like many I’ve cried every time.
Great Granddad Wheels was a shady and complex character with a lot of dodgy contacts and much of what I was told I think was speculation, urban myth or downright lies. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people about him and I think I have come reasonably close to what actually happened.
There is a story about him I was told dozens of times with many variations, which though I doubt it to be true, gives a sense of his character that certainly is accurate. He was reputed to have gone to see a local coal merchant for a weekend job when he was still at primary school. The merchant wanted to know whether he could be trusted to weigh coal into bags and had asked him how many pounds were in a hundred weight. Wheels replied, “Are we buying or selling?” and he got the job.
He was never in trouble after his eight year stretch inside and appeared to most to be a reformed character, but he walked a fine line on the edge of the law with one foot firmly planted on each side of that line. It is clear he was the school’s fix it man. I’m not suggesting he had even the tacit approval of the governors for some of what he did, but whatever he did was always to the benefit of the school and the community.
He left nothing of significance written down, but after he died a large number of people approached me to tell of something he had wanted me to know after his death, often it made no sense till several others gave me another piece of the jigsaw. That most of those people didn’t know each other made me appreciate just how clever he was, especially since I always received the same information from several different persons.
I finally managed to work out indeed it was he who’d had the listed grammar school buildings burnt down. He’d considered it to be in the best interests of the High there be nothing left for opposition to fight for so all the buildings had to go, listed or no. In return, unknown to any during his lifetime, he laundered half a million in drug money via the offenders’ rehabilitation program for an acquaintance in Edinburgh on the understanding Bankirk was off limits to the dealers on pain of death. He didn’t approve of drugs because his mother had prostituted herself to pay for the habit that had destroyed her life and nearly his too. I believe one or two dealers tried it and paid the penalty.
Yes, he was without doubt a crook, but he was a crook who looked after his own, and that ultimately meant the whole town and to some extent all of the borders too. I’ve winnowed through thousands of sources for facts, and I’ll try to tell it as he would have done had he been able to do so.
I can only write this now because I couldn’t read or write for half my life. Most of what is of interest to others I can’t write about or I’ll end up inside again, but I have made sure it will be available after we’ve both gone.
I was a typical Helltown brat, no dad, and my mum sold it for smack. She been a user since twelve and overdosed when she was thirty-six, but she’d looked like she were fifty-six. I’ve always hated drugs, and if I had my way dealers who target kids would all have their throats cut on sight.
I didn’t like school so I didn’t go, and for years I nicked anything I wanted. I always could drive, I had a reaction speed faster than a cat and eyesight to match. I learnt about motors from helping out at the scrapyards when I should have been at school, and by the time I was thirteen I could strip and rebuild anything. At fourteen I was called Wheels by everyone because of the way I could drive. At fifteen I could weld and do bodywork, truth is I was the best. The police have never had a driver in anything that could catch me. It was inevitable I ended up as the wheelman for serious jobs.
Only problem was Eleanor, I fell for her in a big way. She knew what I was like, and I took her for granted. Her dad was a perv who was groping her, and we got married at sixteen and lived in the flat with Mum. Eleanor was glad to get away from her dad, and I was glad she’d have me. She was pregnant within a month of us getting married and I got three months when she was eight months gone. She tried to get me to go straight, but I was in and out of gaol, and when I was out she got pregnant, and then I was back in again leaving her to cope with what eventually became a family of six.
I got put down for ten for driving on an armed robbery. A guard was shot and he died. Like the rest of them, I’d have been put down for twenty if I hadn’t been in the car all the time and believed when I said I’d no idea they had guns. The police had solid evidence I wasn’t part of the gang, and said in court it was clear I’d just been paid as an outsider to drive.
Eleanor refused to bring the kids to see me, she always said if I wanted to spend time with my kids I knew what I had to do, and she was not going to get them used to going into a prison. The last time Eleanor came to visit me she told me she had promised the kids if I didn’t get a job when I came out and start being a proper dad she’d get rid of me and find herself a man who would be happy to look after them. She cried and said she was tired of being on her own and struggling for every penny. She told me she loved me, but I had a choice to make. I was gutted. She’s a tough woman, and I knew she meant every word of it, but I loved her, and I knew she loved me, but she would burn me if I didn’t do right by the kids.
I got let out two years early, and when I got home she told me they were taking on at the school, and to go and get a job. She said if I didn’t get a job not to bother coming back. Edwards gave me a job on the site staff, and said he believed I was good with motors, and if I was up to it I could service the minibuses. I went home with a job, and after eight years inside it was good to share a bed again with her.
To start with, life was a bit difficult with the kids as only the older ones remembered anything about me at all. I serviced the minibuses and did a bit of maintenance too. Then I found the old one I was told was a scrapper. It seemed all right to me, the bodywork underneath was good, but the diff was shot. I got a diff from Brian and put her through an MOT, Edwards was happy about that, and I spent most of my weekdays keeping the minibuses, Edwards’ truck and the lawnmowers going, which was work I enjoyed.
Mikey had started at the High in September and was doing all right. It was the strangest school I ever heard of because most of the staff were from Portugal, and the kids were starting to do lessons in Portuguese, even I was picking it up. Music was everywhere, the kids sang in foreign languages too and played instruments all over the school. Helltown High they called it as an insult back in the days when I didn’t go, now they called it Helltown High and were proud of it.
It was a good place to work, and nobody gave me any shit about having been inside. The only thing that wasn’t good about my life was what I was spending on snout. She never said anything, but I knew she was worried, about my health not the money, so I thought it was time to give up. It was hard, but I wasn’t inside, so there were other things I could do, and I decided to build a couple of go-carts for the kids to drive after school.
I scrounged most of the bits and some old mower engines off Brian, he’s got four kids in the school, two of them boys, and welded up the tubes at his yard, he even gave me a jerry can of petrol. I asked Edwards for a few quid for bits, and he was surprised at how little I needed. The kids thought it was brilliant, and there were a few girls in with the boys too, two of them drivers of promise. I showed them how a cart could be driven, and then I needed more carts because we were racing them round the playing fields. I spoke to Edwards about getting hold of some decent fibreglass crash helmets, preferably made by Bell.
I was getting on really well with the kids, sounds a strange thing to say about your own kids doesn’t it, and I’d told them I joined a basic literacy class to learn to read and write, because I wanted to be able to read magazines on motors and carts. Mikey bought me a copy of What Car and told me to read what I could, and he’d help me with the rest. I swear I’d never been that choked up about anything before.
She said we were doing all right for money, specially since I’d given up smoking. Mikey was doing well at school, not getting into any trouble any more now he was Jamie’s best mate and was getting pretty good playing the French horn, he wanted his own. I knew it wasn’t just a passing interest, and I asker her if she thought we’d be able to buy him one given they were nearly two grand. The first thing I got in reply was a stare, the next, “If you do anything out of order you’re out.”
I calmed her down, and said, “I wasn’t even suggesting it. I just wanted to know if it were possible sometime. I’ve got a good job, don’t smoke any more and I wondered, that’s all.”
The matter was dropped, but I’d got it into my head I wanted to buy Mikey a horn.
I fixed Edwards’ truck, put a new engine in it. I told him I just wanted paying for the time because I needed the money. He asked me if I needed a salary advance, so I told him about the horn. He told me to see music about it as there’d be no VAT to pay. He also said if I wanted I could have it taken so much a month out of my salary, but she’d have killed me for that, so I said no thanks.
I did a bit of work for Brian at weekends getting runners out of scrappers, and it paid well. Well enough to get Mikey his horn before the school year was out.
I took Edwards to the Labour one Friday, Jim had been chasing me for ages to get him down as Edwards was a celebrity in Helton. The school and the area had benefited enormously since he came because he only employed locals, and he employed a lot of us, mostly part time. Many like me were learning something at the school, and Edwards said since we kept the kids in order there was no charge. You could see he was big, but that man was a gold medal Olympic standard drinker. She told me he brought me home.
Not long after, Edwards asked me if I would like to teach the upper school vehicle maintenance. I was stunned and asked, “How can I be a teacher? I can’t read and write properly.”
“There’s no rule that says you have to be able to. I can employ anyone I like. You’ve had the police check, that’s okay, so I’ll ask you again, Wheels, would you like to do it? I’ll pay you experienced teachers’ rate since you’ve proved you can do it with the go-cart club.” Jailbird to senior school teacher in four months, fathom that.
Defost was a joke, especially that pair of idiots who told Edwards I’d threatened them. As I told him, I’ve never threatened anyone in my life. I don’t give warnings, when I’m planning on taking someone out I just do it, preferably when they aren’t aware I’m behind them.
The Defost report was bad, really bad, and the kids, parents and staff were seriously upset by it, but Edwards wasn’t. He was waiting for the NQSE results, he’d put all of years nine, ten and eleven in for NQSE Portuguese, they were speaking Portuguese, the staff said they were more than adequate for NQSE in reading, writing, speaking and listening, even I was okay at the last two. The results were more than even Edwards had hoped for. The Portuguese results were all better than Cs, and the rest were brilliant.
The school later complained about the inspection because the team hadn’t had a Portuguese speaker and lessons were taught in Portuguese, and a silly bitch on the team had given some girls with babies a hard time. The complaint was upheld.
The results party was something else, all of Helton was invited, the cooks had been cooking since dawn, Frankie and his mates had been spit roasting and drinking since the day before, and they were all completely steamed, by the time they were serving food. Mind they were all big men who could handle it steamed or not. I had all the minibuses going round Helton picking up anyone who needed a ride and borrowing tables to sit at, the school had enough chairs. We’d rigged the minibuses with loud speakers so we could invite everybody. We ate and danced and celebrated till long after dark. I think the whole country must have known about it because there was a BBC news camera crew along with loads of reporters there, though I have to say they couldn’t take the drink the way Frankie and his mates could.
I carried on teaching, looking after motors and getting better at reading and writing, but it was a long time before I could read and write as well in English as I could in Portuguese.
Edwards’ death whilst anticipated was much more sudden than any had expected. Amalia was the one who handled it, at least on the outside, better than anyone. I had got to know her well, and she was a tough little lady. I suppose she’d have to be being married to a force of nature like Edwards.
Life at the school carried on and though I wasn’t a governor, Edwards and I had agreed that was the best way to protect the school from some of my potential activities, I was always there at the meetings. Edwards had asked me to be and made it clear to the others it was his wish. I’d had Edwards’ blueprint for the future of the school read to me, it was Amalia who insisted I be allowed to hear it, though there was little in it Edwards and I hadn’t already discussed. She had called a meeting of the core governors, those who knew about the blueprint, and she said to them, in front of me, “Edwards wanted Wheels to know what it says, because he said Wheels will be able to help in ways no one else can, and it will be better to leave it at that.” What a man he was! And he was right in the end.
Eleanor and Helen became Councillors and started the process of turning the Council in to a governors’ sub-committee. They get upset when I say that, but it’s the truth.
When Mikey was in year eleven we both took Portuguese NQSE, he took a load of others too. I got a B, which made me happy but not as happy as being able to read and write. I wished Edwards had been there to see it though.
Jamie and Mikey went to the sixth form to do A’ levels, I’d thought of Jamie as a son for years by then, and Mikey and Sophie had become a couple, though she was giving him a serious run around. He was the only one worried he’d lose her, the rest of us could see he’d got no chance of getting away. Helen and Eleanor said she still had to learn to live with her hormones, and she was jealous of Jamie’s friendship with Mikey. All far too complicated for a man to work out, so I told Mikey that was just the way women were and left them to it.
I spent a lot of time visiting gaols, places I hoped I’d never enter again, for the Bankirk offenders’ rehab scheme, which the Regeneration trust had set up. I was talking to locals who’d been sent down, and making sure they knew they would have at least a decent, warm room, somewhere to eat and a job when they came out. When the authorities came to terms with what we were doing it got some of them out a bit earlier.
I kept in touch, and I wished somebody had taken that much interest in me, but I accepted my mate Edwards had changed everybody he came into contact with, especially me. I never said much about our discussions, but we had talked for hours at a time about how the rehab program should work, usually over a drink, and I made his ideas happen. They worked, none of the men I dealt with ever went back inside. Many said the weekly paper the kids at the school produced for them had been a lifeline. Dozens had written letters to The Bankirk Citizen, as a letter to a newspaper didn’t count as one of their letters home. They were all published, with replies, for them to read in the next issue. Edwards was right, everybody has to look after everybody else.
Eleanor asked me to see if I could find someone to run a similar scheme for women. There were far fewer women inside than men, but those that were tended to have even grimmer histories than the men. It took me over a year before I found Jeanie McClure. Like me she’d done a lot of time, and she knew what was required of a support system for the women, she knew what she was talking about, and she was good at making it happen. Like the men, when they came out the women were living in decent accommodation and had assisted work placements with education and training opportunities.
With help the women who had habits eventually came off the drink and drugs, and if need be the Regeneration Trust lawyers, for no charge, started to fight their battles to get their kids out of care and back with them. Sometimes it took a while, but they never let go, and they never lost either. Once it was realised by women coming out of gaol they would get all the support they needed to rebuild a life and to get their kids back they managed to kick their habits that much faster. No one within our sphere of influence abused women because it soon got about if they did they would receive private, hands on counselling from men who really did not approve of that kind of thing. Once they realised they actually had a life worth having many of the women started looking about for a man, and there were plenty about who were interested.
I was asked to meet with others, all suits, who were impressed by our zero re-offending rate and who wanted to know how it was done. I think they thought I had some simple magic formula. They couldn’t see it wasn’t me, and I was just the contact man the men inside would talk to because I’d done a lot of time. I tried to explain how it started with Edwards and the school, and how you had to have a decent community who wanted their own back, and out of trouble. A community that would provide at least a warm room and a job that would put money in their pockets.
If I had a magic formula it was the kids, but the suits didn’t listen because they thought I was talking it up to make myself look big, I could see it in their eyes. All the schemes they tried were no better than what they’d had before, which made me angry because the price of their failure was paid by those they’d let down who were back inside. I was so angry I changed the name of the paper to The Borders Citizen, and started talking to men from farther afield than Bankirk, men from the county and the counties around us. Those that came to Bankirk on their release for a job and accommodation, like ours stayed out. They were welcome. Jeanie reckoned all women needed to stay out of gaol was their kids, somewhere warm and dry to live, food and hope. Mostly hope she maintained. A decent man was just icing on the cake.
As the scale of their operations increased, Hazdump and Helltown Developments were always looking for staff, but they wanted staff with commitment to Bankirk. The ex-offenders who were housed by us, and whose kids were educated by us had that commitment, and they became ours, along with their wives and kids. Bankirk had become nationally known as a bizarre and elitist cross-border community which it cost no more than commitment to become a member of, though most could not understand how simple it was to have that commitment. More significantly to ex-offenders we were prepared to finance the education and training of ours, no matter where they had originated from, to as high a level as they wanted to go. We had financed convicted murderers out on licence to graduate from Oxford and Cambridge, and we were proud of them. In their turn they contributed massively to the community that had offered them a lifeline.
After sixth form Jamie went to study in Portugal and Mikey in Glasgow. We heard about the death of Jamie’s wife and Helen and Eleanor said he would come home for a bit. My view was he wouldn’t, and I wondered if this was the hardening and tempering Edwards had spoken of. I knew Jamie would come back when he could face us, and I knew he would never be the same again, but I did wonder how the experience would have changed him. He came back with a wife and two daughters for Mikey’s wedding to Sophie. He was indeed a changed man and everything Edwards had said and implied was true.
Helen, Eleanor and I had been invited to dinner with Ruth Maguire and Amalia Edwards and that was when we became aware of Edwards deeper plans and the first time we saw his letter. It was also when we became aware we now had the authority to overrule the governors. Ruth and Amalia told us of Edwards’ thoughts concerning Jamie and what he would have to do, and we had to make sure, as they were doing, there were always guardians to keep things on track. It was no surprise to any of us we had been chosen, we had all been close to Edwards, we liked him, we were friends of Ruth and Amalia’s and we all worked for the betterment of the High, Helton and Bankirk. Our goals were all shared goals.
The listed buildings of the old grammar school site were torched one night and had to be bulldozed down because they were unsafe. My view was a clean start was better, and I suggested the granite from the buildings was incorporated into the frontage of the new houses to retain a bit of history. I got a sideways look at that from Eleanor, but she said nothing.
I didn’t see Jamie again till he applied for the headship by which time I knew he would get it. We three determined that, though, it had already been unanimously agreed by the governors he was the best candidate for a variety of reasons one of which had been he’d told them what his absolute values were, and they could take it or leave it.
Jamie was a good head, and after he had read Edwards massive blueprint for the school’s future he presided over the deep dealings that remained to be done concerning the industrial site and various other manoeuvres like Machiavelli himself. He’d been head for five years and it was Christmas when we showed him Edwards’ letter, and I must say he was calm for a man setting out to change the entire social and political structure of his country.
I have never believed for a second he was unaware of anything I ever did, and I swear he is one of the two best conmen I ever met, but then he was taught by the other: Edwards. That song of his, the song that toppled a crippled nation, and then put it back on its feet whole, I know what it did to me, and I know what it has done to everyone else who has heard it, but I am truly grateful I didn’t have to pay what he must have paid to be able to write it. It’s no wonder he was on the edges of madness and suicide for so long.
Jamie Mac may be Bankirk’s most famous son, but he was Helltown’s before that, and mine long before that.
Great Grandma was a wonderful woman, she had no illusions about the man she loved, and I suspect she went to the grave with almost as many secrets as he. She died four years after Great Granddad and in those four years she never added to what was known of his activities.
She had been a Councillor for Helton for decades and Mayor of Bankirk for ten years. Along with Helen McMillan she had cleaned up Bankirk Council of all those on the take and ensured the tendering for and subsequent awarding of contracts was done on the basis of what was offered for how much rather than on who knew whom, with a preference for local firms as that kept the money in the town. The result was there was a lot more money available to spend on improving the town. There had only been one challenge to the silly slappers from Helltown who knew nothing of the reality of Council business, and he ended up doing three years for fraud with those two silly slappers presenting the damning evidence in court.
Long before her death, the majority of the Council were independents and party politics was something that happened elsewhere. It is only a few years since I became aware the governors of the school could be overruled by Great Granddad, Great Grandma and Helen McMillan and they appointed Jamie Mac as headteacher. I’ll try to tell her story as I believe she would have done.
I went to the same primary school as Wheels, and he was a naughty boy. He was always in trouble, didn’t listen and he learnt nothing. After a bit he got fed up with being shouted at, and just stopped going to school. We all knew his mum was on the game to feed her habit and he wasn’t looked after well. Most of us didn’t have good home lives, but his was none existent. I don’t remember much about him till we went to the High.
He couldn’t read and write, but he always had money. Even then he was good looking, and though people said he was no good and would end up inside a lot of us fancied him. He had a reputation for stealing cars and fast driving, and it was said at thirteen he could drive a car through a gap only an inch wider than the car at over a hundred miles an hour without touching the paint.
He was always nice to me, and though he was what he was I married him when we were sixteen. My father was not a nice man, he was always touching me up, Wheels had seen him, and I think part of the reason he married me was to get me away from Dad. I was glad to leave and was happy to find I was soon pregnant. Wheels got sent down before Anna was born, and that’s how it continued. I couldn’t help myself because I loved him. Every time he came out I got pregnant despite the pill.
When Mikey was three, Wheels was sent down for ten years, and I wasn’t yet thirty. It was hard, and I was struggling. Heaven knows I could have got another man easily enough. I’d met a few who would willingly have taken the kids on to get a decent mum for theirs.
I used to go to Gingerbread, a single parent support organisation, Helen McMillan used to go too. Though about ten years older than she I’d known about her for years, and because I went to school with her elder brother I did recognise her. She was a bit wild when she was younger and had a reputation for drinking too much, using weed and sleeping around too, but there we were both raising kids on our own, and that’s a hell of a leveller. She’d minded the kids once for me when I went to visit Wheels. I wouldn’t take them, Barlinnie is not a nice place. The last time I went I’d made my mind up to give Wheels his last chance. I couldn’t carry on any more on my own, but he had to have the chance. It was simple, get a job and help me raise the kids, or get out of my life, and I’ll find a man who will help me. It was hard, I didn’t love him any less than I always had, but I couldn’t cope any more, and I’d promised the kids that was what I would do.
Mikey had gone up to the High that September, the Catholic secondary was miles away, and most Catholics from Helton went to the High. I heard Wheels was being released early, and also Edwards was only hiring locals. I had to keep my promise to the kids, but I didn’t want another man. I loved Wheels, but he had to get a job, and I knew that would be almost impossible with his record. I went to see Edwards and explained the situation, he asked me what else had Wheels done before the armed robbery. Seeing the puzzled look on my face he said, “What I need to know is he has never posed a danger to children. I’ll have to have him police checked, but I’d rather you told me first.”
“What do you mean? Kiddie fiddling?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“He’s a crook not a pervert, and one of the reasons he married me was to protect me from my Dad,” I protested. I was crying and desperate. “Please. I love him, but I can’t take him back without a job, anything will do, just so he has a job, even if it’s only part time.”
Edwards sent for a pot of tea, and as I calmed down a bit, said, “I’ll give him a week’s trial. What is he good at?”
I told him why he was called Wheels, and he could fix anything with an engine, and Edwards nodded. “Tell him to come and ask to see Ruth Maguire, she’s my personal assistant, and she’ll send him to me.”
I thanked Edwards and asked him not to tell Wheels for a while I’d been to see him.
When Wheels arrived home, I told him Edwards was only taking on locals, and the adverts said to ask for Ruth Maguire. I also told him not to bother coming back without a job. He got the job, and I had to introduce him to the kids when they came home from school. None of them remembered him, the older two remembered about him, but he was a stranger. I could see it in their eyes. I’d never played him false when he was inside, and I was as glad as he when it was bedtime. Afterwards, I told him I’d never had another man ever, but if he was put away again I’d have one in my bed before he reached his cell.
Wheels kept his job, and was picking up Portuguese like the kids. He was being a proper dad to the kids, though he was difficult when he first gave up smoking. I was glad he did because it wasn’t good for him. Mikey was doing well at school, Jamie kept him out of trouble, and he was becoming more and more interested in music all the time. Wheels scared me when he asked about getting Mikey a two thousand pound French horn. I initially thought he meant doing a job to pay for it. Eventually he did some weekend work for Brian and managed to save the money before the year was out.
Helen McMillan had been voted in as a school governor at Christmas and she was forging links between the school and the estates. She had something to do with organising the school dances and was in a class of year elevens learning Portuguese. She came round one day to ask if I’d go too. I must admit it was different, but I enjoyed it. Wheels had started a literacy course because he wanted to be able to read car magazines, Mikey, Jamie and the boys helped him too, and he did Portuguese with Mikey and Jamie.
Helen came round one evening after tea and said, “Defost’s next week. Here’s a list of people to ring, get as many parents and friends of the school in the hall for seven as you can. I’m going round delivering lists for people to ring.”
The hall was packed by seven. There was a lot of talk, but none of it got us anywhere. Helen stood up. I knew she was feisty, but she was just angry then. She said Defost had only left it till that late in the year to justify failing the school because they expected it to fail. She reckoned they would have already written the report. She was right when she said we needed the school, a lot of us worked there, and the kids were doing well.
She said to make them realise the kids were not just learning Portuguese but speaking it we should all speak just Portuguese for the week because they would have to put it in the report. She got a standing ovation, and that’s what happened. It’s well known now the team had no one who spoke Portuguese and the report was damning. It’s equally well known how superb that year’s NQSE results were and the party that Saturday will live on in the memories of anyone who was at it for a very long time. We were on our way. I joined up with Helen, and we formed the estate half of the school estates liaison committee, and the first order of business was raising the money for the new hall.
Edwards’ death a year and a half later was a shock. The man who had given us a decent school, and who in the process made our neighbourhoods decent places to live in again had been taken from us before we could even begin to show our appreciation.
Amalia said he had understood. She was a lovely person, but a strange woman. She had a way of looking at life that could be deeply disturbing. She told me, “We always knew one of us would die before the other, and it would be harder to survive than to die. Of course I wish he were still alive, but he is not, and I will not allow my loss to diminish the contribution I can make to the work that mattered so much to him when it has only just been started.”
I found out a long time later the fatalistic nature of fado, the soul of Portugal, fado means fate, had made the Portuguese as much as they had made it. Years later, Jamie told me it was the world’s first blues music and in his opinion it had never been bettered.
The following year Helen and I decided it would be better for us all if we could have a louder voice on the Council. The two Labour Councillors Helton had were doing nothing for us, the only times any one saw them was when they wanted votes, and we were trying to work out how to get them replaced. Wheels had a blunt and cynical view point, “Anyone who can get as fat as those two bloated tubs of lard isn’t doing enough of anything except eat and drink.” He was the one who said, “Why don’t you two stand at the election next year. You’re well known locally for doing stuff for the school and Helton, and at least you live here.”
“What do we stand as?” I asked. “We can’t stand as Labour candidates, and nobody else will have a look in.”
“I don’t think that’s true any more. Stand as Independents. Then you can vote any way you like in the Council. If you think it’s necessary to have a label call yourselves The Helltown Reform Party, but I reckon you’d be best off standing without a label.”
The pair of us went round the estates, knocking on doors, speaking at meetings generally making it known what we stood for. The sitting Councillors just laughed, and not bothering to even canvass for votes said Helton was solid Labour, and we’d get no more than a handful of votes. Wheels was right, that might have been true once, but no longer. The changes at the school and the jobs it had created had made folk aware change was possible and they had an appetite for more. The turnout was huge, and we were both elected.
Helen and I were amused by the antics of Sophie whose very womanly shape was mesmerising Mikey, but the hormones that had given her that shape were rendering her once placid disposition mercurial in the extreme. That she regarded Mikey as hers was clear to all but him, and Helen said it was only Jamie who could do anything with her. However, by the time Mikey and Jamie finished their A’ levels Mikey and Sophie were an acknowledged couple.
Jamie went to Portugal, Mikey to Glasgow and Sophie studied locally. Jamie’s tragic loss of his wife of less than a month and subsequent move to Kiev rather than coming home perplexed Helen and me, and she was hurt by it. Wheels said he would come back when he could face coming back and not before, and it would be years not months. Wheels was right. He came back with Maria and their little girls for Sophie and Mikey’s wedding. He was even quieter than before and had a unfocussed look about him sometimes as if he were far away, and he looked like the sort of man you would not want to cross. They returned to Kiev immediately after the wedding.
At the dinner party Helen, Wheels and I went to with Ruth and Amalia where we found out about Edwards’ long term plans and our new rôles as guardians of those plans we talked about Jamie and that was when Wheels told me for the first time what Edwards had said about Jamie just before he died. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”
Wheels shrugged and said, “I just assumed he’d have told you and it never came up. I wasn’t keeping quiet about it deliberately.”
“How long will it be before he comes back, Wheels?” Amalia had asked.
“Two maybe three years. He’ll be thirty-one or two, I suspect. Probably a bit young for a head when Julian retires, but he’ll do. He’ll do just fine.”
When the grammar school’s listed buildings were burnt down, I knew fine it was at Wheels’ instigation. I had no proof, and I knew there never would be any, but I knew how his mind worked. He’d have wanted there to be nothing left for the opposition to rally round. And as for his suggestion to use the granite of the buildings in the new houses to preserve the history, put the price up he meant. I didn’t say anything, because even if he admitted it, which I knew he never would, all he would say would be ‘That’s why Edwards wanted me to see the blueprint. He said there would be things only I could help with.’ I’m beginning to think Edwards and Wheels had far more in common than anyone would ever believe, which probably explains why they were drinking mates. I have often wondered exactly what that pair of Machiavellian manipulators discussed over the contents of a bottle or three of single malt. Whatever it was, one thing I am sure of is that it was all in the interests of the folk they both felt obligated to look after, especially the children. For sure they were very different and yet somehow they were brothers under the skin who were decent men with the highest of shared ideals. That Wheels shared his murky secrets with Edwards in return for Edwards’ illegal political goals is beyond doubt to me, and I’m not sure who was the bigger crook or the bigger statesman of the two.
Jamie was a well liked head and the kids knew about his first wife. Helen had it put about discreetly, no one was surprised they knew as kids find out about everything sooner or later. The young mother, toddler and baby unit he had built was a wonder and all sorts of people dropped in, grandparents, young fathers, even shoppers just looking for a chat and a cup of tea and of course babies to play with. As with all the new developments it served an educational as well as a social function and provided a practical element for the child care and relationships lessons. In many ways Jamie was more like Edwards than Edwards had been, but he always quoted Isaac Newton who had said “If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”
When he finally saw Edwards’ letter, it was clear he had long deduced its existence if not its contents and all he said was, “So be it.”
I asked him what Edwards had meant by the battle hymn of love and hate he would bring us to win the hearts of the dispossessed and conquer all. Then he explained about ‘Madeleine’ and sang it as he played. Through my tears I remember thinking, with that on our side, how can we loose? But what had he suffered to be able to write it?
Then I realised for him the suffering would only truly end when he did because the pain of others hurt him.
I had decent parents, far better than most from Helton, but I was rebellious and wild. I drank too much, smoked a lot of weed and bedded anything in pants. Dad died when I was fifteen, my brother’s wife wouldn’t have anything to do with me, and so Mum put up with me for the rest of her life, though I had settled down by my early twenties. I’d the two kids before I was twenty, and their fathers could have been any of six, all no hopers and best left behind. I have to think really hard to remember them now, and I’m not sure I have all of their names correctly. None of them even suspected he could be the father of either Jamie or Sophie, and it was best that way.
Eleanor went to school with my brother, and I’d vaguely known her for years, but I really met her for the first time at Gingerbread. I’d never been one of the Wheels fanciers, because I was so much younger than he, but even after leaving her for the sixth time pregnant to do ten years she was still desperately in love with him. I wouldn’t have liked to have been in her shoes, but I was envious of the passion she still had after all that time and in those circumstances.
Jamie was unusual, where he got his brains from I’ll never know, there’s no one in my family with anything approaching that level of intelligence, some of us are intelligent, but Jamie goes way beyond that, and for sure none of his possible fathers had any brains. He looked after Sophie and got called soft for that, but he didn’t care. I knew he didn’t like injustice or cruelty, but I had no idea of the lengths that would drive him to one day, and for sure till he went to the High I had no idea there was any music in him.
Jamie became mates with Mikey, Eleanor’s youngest, but when he came home that first day he was telling me about a school like no school I ever heard of. It certainly wasn’t the same school I went to. We all knew Edwards was running the school differently, directly employing locals instead of hiring contractors, buying food direct, and we all knew Charlie Johnston who used to be the Coöp butcher, and how it was working, but Portuguese teachers who couldn’t speak English?
It only took a week for everybody in Helton to realise the kids were learning and enjoying it. There were free dinners for all, free cake and tea or milk at break, free breakfasts for any who got there early enough, and music everywhere, and it was the kids who were singing and later playing. Parents were everywhere in the school, and it was making the kids behave. Edwards got all the pregnant girls and girls with babies back into school and they stayed there.
Then there were the dances, that first one wasn’t too packed, but they were after that. To start with Edwards played the music, but it wasn’t long before the kids were playing it. Jamie loved it.
After a bit his friendship with Mikey hurt Sophie, and I had to explain it didn’t mean he loved her any less, but I’m not sure she understood. She came with me to the dances, and I met up with Eleanor again. Wheels had been released early and was working for the school, Eleanor seemed happier than I’d ever seen her before. Jamie and Mikey with a whole crowd of kids were bag packing and trolley collecting at supermarkets at weekends. Sophie went too and that made her a bit happier. They were also singing and playing, Jamie was learning to play the bayan and Mikey the French horn, and they were both learning quickly.
I was asked if I’d stand as a parent governor at Christmas. I didn’t think anyone would vote for me, but I didn’t realise I was the only candidate. It seemed to me since there were a lot of us working for the school the more we were understood by the school, and the more we understood about what Edwards was trying to do the better off we’d all be. I was in the group that organised the school dances and was asked if I’d like to learn Portuguese. Jamie was chattering Portuguese like a jay by then, so I went for it, and I asked Eleanor if she’d like to come too, she did, and though my pronunciation was better than hers she learnt words a lot faster than I did.
Ruth Maguire rang me one Friday afternoon towards the end of the summer term to tell me Defost were in the following week. I printed out a list of parents and friends of the school with their phone numbers, cut it up into bits and went round handing them out for people to ring and get as many as they could to the hall for seven. We’d been expecting Defost for months, and that they had left it this late showed, to me at least, a considerable degree of contempt for us.
The meeting was very well attended, but the talk got us nowhere. I had been thinking about the timing ever since Ruth’s phone call, and by then I don’t think I have ever been so angry about anything in my entire life. They expected us to fail, they had given Edwards the time to fail. I’m not too sure what I said, but I believe it was a fair old rant. I wanted us all to speak Portuguese for the week so they could see how good the kids were. They knew the kids were taught in Portuguese, so they would have someone who could understand. The parents and kids thought it a good idea, and the day after the main governors thought so too. Well, I’d been wrong before, and I got it wrong in spades that time. They had no Portuguese speaker and had no clue what was going on. The report was a disaster and we were gutted. The NQSE results more than made up for it though.
The night of the results party was the first time I’d had a man in my bed for nearly ten years. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and have never regretted resuming a love life since. Jamie and Sophie were both sleeping over with friends, and he was a single Portuguese physics teacher. I learnt something about myself that night, I liked sex, but I did not want a man because I had too much to do without trying to maintain a relationship as well. I wanted to carry on with the school and the community work I was doing, it was important to me, and when I wanted a man for the night I was sure I would be able find an appropriate one. I told Eleanor what I had decided, and she said, “I thought about it many a time, but I’m glad I didn’t. Just sleep with them though, Helen, you don’t need the drink or the weed as well.” She laughed when she said that, but I knew what she meant.
“If I’m going to go to the trouble of getting a man in my bed I want to enjoy myself and remember it too.” We both laughed at that and that was what I did. I was discreet, not for myself, but for Jamie and especially Sophie.
Sophie went to the High the following year, and happy to be back with Jamie followed him and Mikey round like a puppy. She was jealous of Mikey, but too afraid Jamie wouldn’t let her be near him to do much about it. She eventually found friends of her own, but she still spent a lot of time with the boys. Learning to play the Portuguese guitar helped her I think. Her life was further complicated when started to fancy Mikey as well as being jealous of him. I think she’d just about got that sorted out in her head when her periods started, and she became a very well developed young woman almost over night. She’d got more to show for herself than I’d had when I was nursing either of them. Mikey was besotted with and terrified of her. Her temperament was dreadful. I told her I’d been the same, and Mum agreed with me. We both knew I’d not been, but it made her feel better. Jamie was the only one who could handle her, and he did it effortlessly. She did settle down eventually, but she still gave Mikey a terrible time.
When Wheels suggested Eleanor and I stood for the Council for the Helton wards, at first we both thought he was joking, but the idea grew on us and Eleanor said, “We’ve got to be better than the pair of bone idle layabouts we’re stuck with now.” We got some derision but when the votes were counted they conceded when we’d got fifty percent of the electorate. That was when the fun began. Wheels was very good at finding out who was doing what with Council taxpayers’ money, and only one didn’t go quietly, and he ended up doing three years for fraud.
It was only when Mikey was going away to Glasgow Sophie realised she had to stop treating him badly, or there was a real chance she would lose him. She was discreet, but it was obvious when they had become lovers, she was much more relaxed with him, and she smiled differently when she talked about him.
Years later Jamie told me he’d known from the first results party night I took a lover now and again, but he didn’t consider it any of his business, and appreciating it would hurt Sophie he kept his mouth shut. I suppose I should have known he’d have worked it out. Sophie was staying over in Glasgow with Mikey at weekends when she found out, and initially she didn’t handle it well. It was when I said, “So it’s all right for you to have needs is it, Miss, but when I do I’m a slut. Is that what you’re telling me, Sophie?” We both ended up crying, and Sophie admitted how badly she needed Mikey sometimes when he was so far away. What I did find surprising, because she was normally so sensible about that sort of thing, was her admission she was desperate for a baby and had considered many a time just not taking her pills. She hastened to add she’d never do that to Mikey, but it was something she fantasised about, making love with the intention of getting pregnant. We got on a lot better after that.
I was sure Jamie would come home after Madeleine’s death, so was Eleanor. Wheels knew better. Jamie didn’t come till Sophie’s wedding, and I managed not to cry when I saw him. My granddaughters were a joy, and Maria was obviously holding Jamie together, but later I wept uncontrollably at what I’d seen graven on his face. I wanted them to stay for at least ten days, but Wheels said, “You have to let him go, Helen. It’s torturing him to be here. He only came for Sophie, he’s not ready to come home yet, but he will be in a year or two, maybe three.” Jamie and his family went back to Kiev and the next time I saw him everything had changed.
Wheels, Eleanor and I had been made custodians of Edwards’ greater plan by Ruth and Amalia, and it was now a question of patience.
When Julian Williams, the head of the High, notified the governors of his intended retirement, Wheels contacted Jamie and told him to get an application in. He told me Jamie had said he didn’t think he would even make the shortlist at his age, but Wheels told him as one of Edwards’ kids he was guaranteed to, though he wasn’t allowed to tell him why. Wheels is a manipulator born.
Jamie came over for the interviews, and even without the three of us intervening he got the job. Edwards and Wheels had been right, he was a superb head and as manipulative as Wheels. I think outside of the Helltown Investments’ staff he was the only one who understood the whole picture, and he was guiding them. He was still hurt, and I let a couple of discreet women know it might be a good idea if the kids knew about his first wife, but to make sure everybody down the chain only told a few, so though the kids would eventually know they wouldn’t know where it had come from. We could tell they knew within the week, and it did help. Kids are always kind and considerate to those they like and respect.
I’ll never forget that Christmas day, Mum had died eighteen months before, and the family gathered with me at Christmas now, including Eleanor, Wheels and theirs who’d been family for years before Sophie and Mikey married. I’d asked Maria to allow Jamie two hours to do some paperwork in the kitchen and to make sure we weren’t disturbed. She was much more perceptive than I’d thought, and she said, “This is it isn’t it? It’s what he’s been waiting for from Edwards?” I’d nodded, and she said, “I’m glad because it will provide the situation he needs in which to lay the last of his nightmares aside.” Like I said. A very clever perceptive young woman.
Wheels gave him Edwards’ letter. Jamie read it a few times and in a voice that sounded very far away, he just said, “So be it.”
Eleanor asked him some questions about what Edwards had said, but we hadn’t understood and he explained about the writing of ‘Madeleine’ and then he sang it. That wonderful, terrifying song into which he’d poured his soul was written by my son.
Wheels and Eleanor are away now, and I can’t be far from it, but we all lived long enough to see what use Jamie made of his song. Jamie Mac, I gave birth to him, but his real fathers were definitely not the no hopers I’d slept with.
Edwards and Wheels McCann could both have been called many things, but a no hoper was not one of them.
Perhaps to explain things a little I should tell you of myself. I am William McCann’s eldest daughter, William was Mikey and Sophie’s eldest son. Mum, Agnes, after whom I was named, was four years younger than he and I was born when she was eighteen. When he left university where he studied metallurgy he worked at the scrapyard, for Mum’s granddad Brian, and he took it over when Brian retired and turned it into a multi million pound recycling business empire.
I had lost my sight when I was fifteen months old, and I can’t remember being able to see much. Great Granddad Wheels and I were very close, so my telling of him will have been coloured by my love for him. From me being a little girl he kept telling me, “No one should ever trust anybody other than those who he knows truly love him. You can’t see, so this is especially important to you, but you will be able, better than most, to recognise those who really love you.” As a result I married a cousin and my married name is the same as my maiden name.
Wheels, who to no one’s surprise, died a wealthy man, left every thing to Great Grandma Eleanor, but on her death it all came to me including her estate. Her will stated I needed the money more than any other, and due to my intelligence and nature I would be the best to make sure nobody in the family suffered due to a lack of money, and also, since she knew I could not be taken advantage of, the family’s resources were safest in my control.
I did well at school, and because I wanted to remain independent, I became a freelance writer. When Great Uncle Jamie asked me to undertake this project I was delighted. He was a lovely man, despite what had been written about him by those who resented the changes he brought about which had cost them their ability to parasitise the general public whom their sort had brainwashed for generations into believing they were incapable of managing their own affairs.
When he died at the age of a hundred and three, he had refused the anti-ageing treatments, there was no one who missed him more than I.
There is no longer a need for there to be guardians of Edwards’ plans, but the most senior governors of the school are known as The Guardians and three of my cousins and I are the current office holders.
