Julie Shaw - Closer than Blood - Friendship Helps You Survive

All names and identities have been changed in this memoir, to protect both the living and the children of those who have died. Some changes have been made to historical facts for the same reason.

HarperElement

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First published by HarperElement 2014 as My Mam Shirley This edition 2018

© Julie Shaw and Lynne Barrett-Lee 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018 Cover photographs © plainpicture/Emma McIntyre (woman); plainpicture/bobsairport (moody street)

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Julie Shaw and Lynne Barrett-Lee assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007542284

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780007542291

Version: 2018-02-21

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Echoes of My Past

Note by the Author

Hudson Family Tree

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Exclusive sample chapter

Further titles in this series

Moving Memoirs eNewsletter

Write for Us

About the Publisher

A wall full of faces smile down on me,

And my heart begins to swell,

Past fuses with present so seamlessly,

Oh the stories these pictures could tell.

Old black and white memories are dancing,

Side by side with the colour of youth,

Hidden heartache temporarily halted,

By smiles that are clouding the truth.

Such happy times, such sad times,

Each inextricably linked to the last,

With spaces left for the future,

Amid these echoes of my past.

My name is Julie Shaw, and my father, Keith, is the only surviving member of the 13 Hudson siblings, born to Annie and Reggie Hudson on the infamous Canterbury Estate in Bradford. We were and are a very close family, even though there were so many of us, and those of us who are left always will be.

I wanted to write these stories as a tribute to my parents and family. The stories are all based on the truth but, as I’m sure you’ll understand, I’ve had to disguise some identities and facts to protect the innocent. Those of you who still live on the Canterbury Estate will appreciate the folklore that we all grew up with: the stories of our predecessors, good and bad, and the names that can still strike fear or respect into our hearts – the stories of the Canterbury Warriors.

Listerhills, Bradford, 1946

Shirley glared at the man who was sitting across the table from her; sitting, moreover, in her mam’s chair. He was old and very tall and he was staring at her.

He leaned forward. ‘You’ll sit there all day, madam, if that’s what it takes,’ he said. ‘But you will eat those sprouts and that’s an end to it.’ Then he sat back in her mam’s chair and lit a cigarette. Shirley looked down at the disgusting green balls on her plate. No way was she eating them. Her mam wouldn’t have made her eat them. Her mam had gone to work – she worked on the trolley buses and had left hours and hours ago – and if Shirley had to sit there till she came home, then she would.

Shirley couldn’t quite believe her mam had gone and left her with this strange man in the first place. Normally when she went to work she’d leave her with her Granny Wiggins or her Auntie Edna, but then the man had turned up last night and they’d both sat Shirley down, with serious looks on their faces. ‘This is your dad,’ her mum had explained. ‘He’s come home from the war.’

Shirley didn’t remember much about the war, but she knew she had a daddy and that he’d been in it, far across the sea, somewhere hot. He was called Raymond and her mam said he was going to be in charge now, which apparently included cooking all the meals when her mum was out at work and forcing her to eat things she hated.

Well, trying to. ‘But I hate sprouts!’ she protested again, hoping that he might get fed up of listening to her and allow her to leave the table so she could go and do something else. She still had to make her favourite dolly some new clothes.

‘And I don’t care,’ he said, blowing smoke out of his mouth in a cloud that wafted across to her and made her nose wrinkle. ‘Good food is hard to come by,’ he added, ‘and sprouts are very good for you. So you’re not going to waste them. I’m your father and that’s that.’

Shirley scowled at him. Two could play at that game. She folded her arms, started to swing her feet under her chair and counted sheep going over a wall in her head. She could count to a hundred now – her mam had taught her how to do it when she couldn’t get to sleep at nights, and now it would help pass the time until she got back home from work.

As Shirley counted she stole glances at the man across the table. He had shiny stuff on his hair and the tops of some of his fingers were all yellow, and she decided she didn’t like him one bit. She’d wanted him to be an uncle so she knew he’d go away again, or, if he wasn’t, at least be nice like they always were. Her mam had brought home several uncles, all of them vastly preferable to the miserable-looking man in front of her, so if she did have to have one move in with her and her mam, why couldn’t it have been one of them instead?

Not that she’d ever tell anyone. Her mam had warned her that she must never, ever mention the uncles, and because Shirley was a good girl she would do as she was told.

But she wasn’t going to be a good girl when it came to eating sprouts. Her mam didn’t make her eat them and this dad man wasn’t going to either. So she was still sitting at the table when the sky grew dark outside and her mam finally got home from work.

With her back hurting and her bottom numb, Shirley was upset enough as it was when she saw her, but it was the parcel of chips her mother held in her hand that hit her hardest. She jumped down from the chair and immediately burst into tears.

‘What’s going on here?’ her mother asked, immediately rushing across to scoop her up and embrace her.