David Whelan - No More Silence

I had been on Uist for less than two years, but such was the influence it had on me that even when I thought very hard about it I could not conjure up a vision of what had gone before. The past was a film running in my mind, but it was an old movie, sepia-toned, blurred and moving far too quickly to make any sense.

By now, I knew that we were being reunited with Ma, a mythical creature, with her long, lustrous hair, dark eyes and faded glamour. I knew her only through what I had been told. If the knowledge that I had brothers and sisters had been a surprise, the fact that I had a mother was a revelation. I had thought I was an orphan. For as long as I could remember I had no real sense of having a mother, merely a succession of female figures who, to a greater or lesser degree, offered me security and care. Morag had come closest to fulfilling the role. However, very soon, I, and my brothers and sisters, would be reunited with the woman who, in spite of her manifold problems, clung to some notion of keeping a family together. I am still not sure why, and I don’t think she was either. I don’t believe she could have articulated her reasons, but I cling to the belief that there existed within her some degree of mothering instinct that would not allow her, no matter how bad things were, to relinquish her brood.

On that day, in the aircraft, when the sun sat high above the clouds in a place that is for ever summer, I could not know how bad things were going to get. I was travelling towards yet more uncertainty, an uncertainty that would characterise my life until the blessed moment when, many years hence, I would escape the horrors that it bred. As the aircraft made its descent through the white clouds and back into the more familiar grey world of my experience, a scintilla of hope began to form in my mind. It would, as always, be extinguished before too long, but in that moment I was comforted by the knowledge that she was waiting for us. Our mother. And from somewhere deep inside me a kind of love for her was dragged to the surface. Can one ever not love one’s mother, no matter how neglectful or remote or cruel? Many good women had looked after me, but this woman was my mother, and my mother wanted me.

It was 1966, and many of the inhabitants of the great industrial metropolis of Glasgow had been transplanted from their deprived and dirty inner-city ghettos into the vast new council housing estates on the periphery of the old city. The city’s fathers had burst with pride when they created the housing schemes in the countryside, into which a beleaguered population could escape, with the promise of a new life far from the slums. It was a time of hope. Who was I to swim against the tide? I ran forward to meet my mother. I should have known that hope always comes with an expiry date.

CHAPTER 5

‘Give Your Ma a Kiss’

‘It would seem that Mrs Whelan is basically a weak, inadequate individual almost wholly unable to cope … There has been a serious and consistent deterioration in the already weak family structure’

SOCIAL WORK REPORT

‘Davie, give your ma a kiss.’ The dark, exotic stranger, with her red lips and raven-black hair piled on her head in a beehive, offered me a pale powdered cheek. Morag’s condemnation of cosmetics as the wiles of the Devil flew into my mind. ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long, long time,’ she said in an accent that was pure Glasgow but underscored by the softer tone of Middle England, where she had apparently been living for several years.

She had come back to the city with an impractical and naïve dream of reuniting her family. I would learn soon that the novelty of being reunited with that family would last little more than a few weeks, presumably far less time than her anticipation of this reunion.

From somewhere behind her, the strains of ‘Nobody’s Child’ were emanating from one of the as yet unknown rooms in this strange and too modern dwelling to which we had been brought. The song is a mawkishly sentimental ditty that began life as a country-and-western song. It had been espoused by a much-loved Scottish singing duo known as the Alexander Brothers. Ma was of a maudlin disposition. As an adult, the irony of that particular song playing is not lost on me. She favoured these sad songs by performers such as Jim Reeves about tribulation, heartache and the odd dog dying. In Glasgow, they are described as songs that ‘make the blood run oot the record player!’

‘I’ve never stopped thinking about you all,’ said this creature I had no memory of. ‘We’ll be one big, happy family now. We’ll muck in together. It’s all going to be all right, you’ll see.’ She was dressed in a two-piece pale-blue suit – what used to be referred to as a ‘costume’ – and she wore black leather stilettos.

Where are her wellies? I thought.

As she bent low to cuddle me, it felt so awkward, angular and unnatural. The mask of white powder and rouge seemed to hide more than her face. My thoughts returned, as they would do for some time, to Morag, until the months and years eventually distanced me from her. When Morag clasped you in one of her fierce embraces, there was warmth in it. This woman, who smelled of smoke curling from the burning Senior Service cigarette in her hand, had no maternal love in her. I kissed a stranger.

We were all awkward with her, but especially Irene. She refused to go near Ma and hid behind Jeanette. Irene had been devastated by leaving Uist. I would learn her resentment towards Ma was all-encompassing. To her dying day she blamed our mother for us being put in care. Irene could not and would not bond with Ma. She would also blame Ma for the cruelty and abuse we suffered at Quarriers. They had a difficult and fractured relationship, which would endure until Ma’s death, in 1980, when she was just 49.

When Irene set eyes on Ma and our new home, she began wailing loudly, burying her face in Jeanette’s skirt, resisting all attempts by our mother to comfort her. Johnny and Jimmy, who were older and had clearer memories of Ma, were less awkward and hid behind bravado.

The social worker, who had escorted us from Glasgow Airport, broke the tension. ‘Right, I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said. ‘This has been a big journey for you all.’ It was an under-statement of massive proportions.

Ma gave up on Irene and took Jeanette, with Irene still clinging to her, into the bedroom where the two sisters were to share a double bed. Johnny, Jimmy and I were to sleep in a second bedroom. As the oldest, Johnny had the privilege of a single bed, while Jimmy and I would share a double.

Our address was 34 Katewell Avenue, Drumchapel, Glasgow. This was the neighbourhood of the young Billy Connolly, who would go on to make a living from his ability to translate the barren existence of life on estates such as these into a hugely successful comedy career. The Hollywood actor James McAvoy, a star of such films as Atonement , The Last King of Scotland and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , had yet to be born into this often troubled place. The comedian and the actor represent nuggets of gold in a mountain of dross. The vast majority of the rest of us would be shovelled through lives characterised by want and unfulfilled potential. There would be few escapees. Good people lived here, but good chances were few. Kinship and community spirit were their armour.

We had four rooms on the top floor of a three-storey tenement overlooking green fields and fresh hopes. Ma showed us around the flat. There were no carpets on the floors. Patched linoleum struggled to cover bare wooden boards. The furniture was utilitarian and mismatched, all of it second-hand, courtesy of the Social Work Department. The living room was crowded with a hard nylon-covered three-piece suite, which left marks on your legs if you sat on it for too long. By the window were a table and four chairs. The only heat source in the entire house was a minuscule coal fire in the living room, which heated the water in a back-boiler. Ask any child of their memories of growing up in such a house and they will tell you about awakening on winter mornings and scraping ice from the windows on the inside of the glass.