During those years just before the war I was not wanted at home. Most of the time I was able to stay with my grandmother but when I was nearly four years old my mother had become pregnant with Brenda and it was felt that my grandmother would be needed to look after her for a while when the baby came. So I was shipped off to stay in London at the home of my Uncle Fred and Aunt Betty, my mother’s cousin, who lived in Bromley, Kent, on the outskirts of the city. Of course, I felt rejected by this turn of events – even if my parents did not seem to want me, at least I had always had the comfort of staying with my grandmother. However, my stay in Bromley turned out to be one of the happiest periods of my childhood.
I found for the first time in my life that I was surrounded by people who enjoyed being together and welcomed me into the midst of their happiness with open arms. I felt that I now really belonged to a loving, happy family. It felt so good and I was living what seemed to a carefree life – which for me was something of a novel sensation. I woke up every morning with happy thoughts and looked forward to the day without fear of doing something wrong – there was only the anticipation of enjoyable times ahead. All this was in complete contrast to my last morning at home before Uncle Fred came to collect me for the long trip to London.
My mother was having a very sickly time with her pregnancy and I was worried about her but my father seemed to resent my presence and had no doubt been the prime mover in sending me away. He came home for his lunch and he called me to him to show me the reddest, most desirable apple I had ever seen. Holding it in front of me, he snarled that the apple was for my mother alone and he threatened me with all kinds of violence if I touched it. He then placed it away in a moveable cupboard we called a press. My father’s words hurt me deeply because I loved my mother and would have given her everything I had to please her. I certainly would never have stolen her apple.
My cousin June, my Aunt Betty and Uncle Fred’s daughter, was exactly my age having been born on the very same day as myself. We were like twins and were playmates from the very beginning. Freda, her sister, was much younger and couldn’t keep up with us, but she liked it when we all played ball games in the big garden of the house. In their family I was given a sense of self-esteem that was previously unknown to me. I was often indulged in ways I had never really known, especially by my Aunt Betty’s mother, Aunt Meggie, who reminded me of my grandmother. Not surprisingly, I never felt homesick.
During my stay with them the family had arranged to go on a summer holiday to Clacton-on-Sea and it thrilled me to know that I was to go with them. It was the first holiday I had ever experienced. The holiday at Clacton had many significant episodes for me that brought out my love for nature. It was my first contact with the sea. For me, like many children, splashing about in warm waters at the seaside was a wonderful encounter with nature, releasing my pent-up feelings and stripping away my inhibitions. I splashed about with abandon in the warm water and discovered a new aspect to nature to enjoy and revere. On some days we would all go to the outdoor swimming pool and it was there, with the help of my cousins, that I finally learned to swim.
One day my excitement reached a crescendo when I discovered tiny, eel-like fish swimming around my legs as I splashed deeper into the waves and realized that the sea really was inhabited with all sorts of living things. It was quite a revelation. It filled me with a sense of awe about the sea, which has never left me. At night, in our holiday chalet, I listened with wonder to the sound of the sea. I slept a deep sleep of contentment while lulled by the swish of the tide as the waves whispered and then slapped against the shore.
Back at the house in Bromley there were many further opportunities to excite my burgeoning interest in natural things. It was decided that I could go and sleep at my Aunt Meggie’s house, only two doors away from the family, where I could have a bedroom to myself rather than sleeping in the same bedroom as June and her younger sister, Freda. Next to my Aunt Meggie’s house lived a bachelor who bred white pedigree rabbits. Observing my interest in his rabbits from across the back garden fence, he invited me over to meet his pedigree creatures. I was enthralled to become acquainted with these soft-furred animals that were the main focus of his life. We became friends and he offered to give me one of his prize breeds for free, which normally would have fetched a sizeable sum of money. Unfortunately, I knew that I had to turn down his kind offer as I was all too aware that my father appeared to hate wildlife of any sort. I was afraid of his reaction to a pet rabbit and knew that the joy of bringing one home would only end in terrible unhappiness. I contented myself with helping the neighbour to care for his animals, feeding them and playing with them on the lawn. I soon began to share his fascination for them.
My carefree time came to an end when I was told that my return home was imminent. I cried when I left because I was being torn away from the embrace of a truly loving family, unlike my own back at Blaydon-upon-Tyne. As usual, my father didn’t seem too pleased to have his son back at home, and on the day I returned he warned me in no uncertain terms that I was not to go anywhere near my newborn sister, Brenda. In fact, although I heard her crying at night sometimes, I was not allowed to even set eyes upon her until six weeks later when one day my mother was feeding her and motioned me over to behold the baby. She was pink-fleshed and blue-eyed and I immediately began to feel jealous. Subsequently this state of affairs escalated as I witnessed the amount of attention that was lavished on my sister, especially by my father, as well as the multitude of baby toys that were bought for her amusement.
At Christmas I became increasingly aware of just how far I was being marginalized – I just didn’t seem to be a proper part of the family. In previous Christmases, no one except my grandmother and my Uncle John had bothered to buy me presents of any worth to me at Christmas time. I would receive some new clothes, and occasionally a snakes-and-ladders board game or a small bar of chocolate would be thrown in. Now, in the run up to Christmas, I observed the family’s efforts to provide my baby sister with a plethora of cuddly toys, dolls and delicious things to eat. I began to think that times had changed and so I put in a request for a model fire engine, for which I longed.
Christmas Eve arrived and in a frenzy of trepidation I awaited the morning only to find that I had yet another snakes-and-ladders board game, an orange and an apple in my stocking. I should have known better, but I was filled with an all-consuming disappointment. Even my grandmother and Uncle John had only bought me packets of sweets that I didn’t really like such as liquorish and boiled bull’s eyes. In contrast, my sister Brenda received an abundance of baby toys and even a doll’s pram which seemed like madness because she couldn’t even walk at this stage. I consoled myself by disappearing and spending the day in Winlaton Woods watching birds and crested newts by a small stream deep in the woods. I was missed when I didn’t turn up for lunch but my father thought that it was best to just forget about me.
My grandmother called in at home to see the baby and when she heard that I was missing, she grew concerned. She went to Billy Murphy’s house and asked him to find me. Billy was my best friend at school. We sat together in class and were often caned for talking together or giving the wrong answers to questions in mental arithmetic sessions. I helped Billy with his schoolwork and he helped me fight off bullies in the school playground. At weekends we played around the streets together. He knew the places in the woods that I favoured and often joined me there. True to form, Billy caught up with me and we both went back to my grandmother’s house and ate freshly cooked sausage rolls and a dish each of homemade rice pudding.
As I think back to earlier times I recall that my parents seemed to be quite happy to farm me out to relatives and neighbours as often as they could. They never seemed to want to take me anywhere with them, which meant that I spent a lot of my life, from the age of two onwards, with a variety of strange characters – mostly local old women – who treated me with extreme kindness for which I am eternally grateful. Meanwhile, my parents went dancing or to the cinema, while at weekends they invariably joined the betting fraternity at Scotswood Greyhound Racing Stadium.
These older ladies included the aged aunt of my mother, Aunt Hannah, with whom I regularly spent nights at weekends. She would often entertain her neighbours who were of a similar age and they taught me to play card games such as whist and snap, as well as dominoes and draughts. We seemed to spend hours playing these games and betting on the outcomes with a pile of halfpennies as stake money. At times I cheated as I got carried away by the fun of the games, but no one seemed to mind – just playing the game and filling in the time was what mattered most. Thinking back to those times I now realize how privileged I was to share the company of these dear old ladies who were in effect surrogate aunts. They rarely became impatient with me and they were always caring and loving, which boosted my lack of confidence. I always felt much favoured by them. They also fed me delicious ham sandwiches and homemade chips.
The ladies often took the time to talk with me and related stories about their lives that stimulated my young mind. I learnt about the world through their eyes and I was able to tap into their wealth of experience to understand more about life. The contrast with my home life was marked: in the evenings when we were all at home together my parents rarely spoke to me, being too busy with their own concerns. If I agitated them by asking questions I would usually be told to ‘go and play with something’. The gentle old ladies never treated me in this way. We tended to laugh a lot of the time and they seemed to enjoy my company. The wireless was always on: ‘Just in case,’ my Aunt Hannah would say, ‘we get invaded by the Hun.’ Some of the other ladies said they would rather not know. I tried not to think about it because we had no guns or swords with which to protect ourselves from the German invaders, even though the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, kept saying that we would fight them on the beaches and in the backstreets. I decided that if they did come I would hide somewhere with my grandmother until the Germans were beaten and gone.
At this time my grandmother figured large in my life. I would usually stay with her at weekends and we would go what she called ‘visiting’. And so I often found myself in strange houses with strange people – and some of them really were rather peculiar. My grandmother always dressed elegantly on these occasions and had a hat adorned with several exotic bird feathers that she especially favoured. One such visit turned out to be very unusual indeed and it stimulated my growing interest in wildlife, but in a very unorthodox manner.
My grandmother had a friend called Hannah Doby, an ex-teacher who held very eccentric views about life. She lived in an eighteenth-century cottage near the Dene, a kind of public park. Her cottage was cosy and warm as well as being well-furnished and remarkably clean in spite of what I was to witness there when I visited with my grandmother. We were offered honeyed tea, hot buttered scones with homemade strawberry jam and rice cake that she had made herself, all of which was delicious. During our tea my attention was drawn to a large cage by the window. It contained two birds that whistled musically and looked to be well cared for and contented. Miss Doby noticed my interest in her birds and she introduced me to them, calling them by their names, Sugar and Spice. They were beautiful, yellow canaries – a little touch of summer sunlight in the window. They were obviously very fond of her and both of them came close to the cage when she called them to receive, each in turn, a morsel of rice cake.
I was fascinated with them so she said, as a treat for being such a good boy and showing interest in her birds, she would allow me to see her other ‘wild pets’. Not knowing what to expect I simply stayed by the window next to the canaries. Beckoning me to join her from across the room near the fire she drew her stool close to the stone fireplace and began to whistle softly, interspersing the whistling with softly murmured words of endearment. I wasn’t sure what would happen and cast a glance back at my grandmother who was calmly watching us whilst eating a scone and holding a cup of tea in her hand. Suddenly there was a wild scrambling by the hearth in front of the coal fire and, to my astonishment, a pair of grey mice appeared. They sat up and begged in front of Miss Doby like two miniature dogs. Behind me I heard a coughing and spluttering as my Nanna choked on her tea at the sight. To me it was like a scene from my Mickey Mouse comic come alive.
Miss Doby leaned forward and, addressing the mice by name – Chico and Choo – she introduced them to me as she fed them pieces of cake. When she had finished feeding them she stroked each of the mice with her fingers and bade them goodbye.
She then turned to me and said, ‘Well, what do you think of that, boy?’
‘Wonderful,’ I replied with childlike enchantment.
‘These mice are my friends,’ she continued. ‘They are part of nature’s plan to live in tune with other life and with humans and we do not have the right to hurt or kill them just because we are too selfish to share what we have.’
We left Hannah Doby’s cottage shortly after the performance with the mice and once outside my grandmother said that she wouldn’t be going back there again. She told me that rodents, particularly mice, were dirty creatures and carried disease, and she wished that she hadn’t eaten anything in case the mice had been at it. But my little boy’s eyes had seen that after eating the offerings of rice cake each mouse had proceeded to lick its paws and wash its face. In contrast, some of the boys I played with around the backstreets always seemed to have dirty faces, with grime, chocolate and the remnants of cake smeared around their lips and chins. Perhaps they could do with a lesson from the mice.
In bed later that night I recalled what I had seen and I was impressed by the words of the strange old lady who appeared to be gentle and loving as well as wise. She made me think more about nature and what it meant in my life. How could I fit into nature’s plan with all the other wild creatures? I went to sleep with no idea how I might accomplish this, but once again, I felt that studying nature was somehow going to be of vital importance to my life.
One day, at the age of six going on seven, I was playing in the backstreet with an old tennis ball during a half-term school holiday. I was throwing the ball against the wall and trying to catch it when it bounced back, which was good catching practice because the back lane was laid with cobbles and the ball tended to swerve unexpectedly when it bounced. Across from where I was playing that morning a backyard door opened and a man came out carrying his bin for the refuse collection. On seeing me he stopped, stared at me a while and then gestured for me to approach him. He pointed into his backyard where there was a collection of balls of all shapes and sizes.
‘You can have all of those if you want,’ he said in a gravelly voice. ‘They came over my wall and I wouldn’t throw them back because they are a nuisance to me but you can have them if you like.’
I ran forward and scooped up three or four of the best-looking ones and turned to say thank you.
‘You’re welcome, sonny,’ he said. ‘But don’t throw them back over my wall.’
I scurried away with my collection of balls and stored them in a box in our backyard under a lean-to roof.
‘Where did you get those?’ my mother said from the open back door.
I explained and told her that I did say thank you before she could ask.
‘That would be Mr Markham. Why don’t you ask him if he needs any errands done? He might pay you, you never know.’
And that is how I came to be acquainted with our neighbour, Mr H. Markham. I had seen the ‘H’ on some of the used envelopes he threw out in his rubbish bin. I never found out what it stood for but decided that it was probably ‘Henry’ simply because I had heard about a king called Henry at school. He took up my offer to run messages for him and would pay me in pennies when I had finished. Much more important from my point of view was that he engaged me in conversation. At first it was simply the sort of polite talk about day-to-day concerns but when he realized that I was interested in talking with him, and that I was enthusiastic about wildlife and learning about nature, then our conversations took a more serious turn.
He started to tell me about all the animals that he had kept and cared for, and how earlier in his life he had studied Biology and had attended lectures by the eminent biologist Sir Julian Huxley – the brother of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World. He told me that Julian Huxley thought that human beings had been developing as a species for many millions of years through the process of evolution. In fact, it had taken three billion years for humankind to arrive at the stage it had reached now. Mr Markham said that Professor Huxley explained that through this long period of development humankind alone had developed what he called ‘consciousness of self and all the possibilities this brings to us’.
‘When Roo, my cat, looks in the mirror,’ explained Mr Markham, ‘he thinks he sees another cat but when we look in a mirror we know that we are looking at ourselves. This is because our human minds have evolved to the point that we are aware not just of ourselves but of other people and the world in a way that gives us the power to change things through what we think and imagine. This makes us responsible for what happens in life because we can do something about it.’
He asked me if I understood what he said and I told him that I thought it meant we could do things to help nature since we could see what needed to be done but a bird or a rabbit couldn’t do that.
‘Good boy!’ he said.
Later in my life I came to the same conclusions as Mr Huxley and Mr Markham.
On many days, after I’d run his errands, he would take time to describe some of his experiences with animals whilst he lived and worked in foreign countries like Egypt and Morocco. Recognizing my appetite for knowledge about the natural world he astounded my mind with stories of exploring the Amazon forest and hunting for unknown kinds of orchids and other plants. One of the tales he told me was about a ferocious man-eating jaguar that stalked his party in the deep jungle and attacked one of his native bearers one night when they were camped near the river. He told me that they tried to escape from the big cat by travelling downriver by raft and canoe, but the creature followed their progress from the riverbanks. The party was filled with fear as the huge yellow beast, with its black spots and markings, moved stealthily along the bank and affixed them with its fierce stare from the jungle shadows.
‘Why didn’t you shoot it?’ I asked him.
‘We did not go there to kill but to explore and learn. The jaguar was only following the instincts of her nature as a wild inhabitant of her jungle world, she only killed for food; if we had killed her it would have been out of revenge, which is a petty human trait.’
‘So you were the intruders into her land where she had the right to roam free,’ I replied.
‘Why, Denis O’Connor, my boy, you’re a psychologist!’ He said with an approving nod and benign smile.
‘What’s a psychologist? I asked him.
‘A learned person who seeks to understand why animals and people do the things that they do.’ Mr Markham didn’t realize it, but he had just opened the door to my future profession in psychology.
His attention and approval started to boost my feeble self-esteem and fuelled my appetite for knowledge. I was beginning to look forward to the times when Mr Markham wasn’t busy and had time to talk with me, which was usually on the weekends or school holidays. I learned through him that some people can talk to children in a way that puts them at ease and that these adults make the best teachers. He was helping me to learn about life and was feeding my awakening interest in all things natural. He let me look at his aquarium, which was full of exotic coloured fish. I never tired of watching the different types of fish, which would swim, flit or just stay almost perfectly motionless in the water. He also let me stroke Roo, his ginger tomcat. He said he called the cat ‘Roo’ because he ‘rued’ the day he’d allowed the cat to stay and ‘take over his house’. In truth, he seemed to have a great deal of affection for Roo, a healthy looking cat who had his own cushion and feeding bowls, and appeared very comfortable and pleased with his lot.
One day before school I brought Mr Markham’s newspaper and loaf of bread back from the local shop, but he didn’t answer when I called to him at the half-open back door. Thinking he was perhaps busy with his aquarium, I pushed the door open and went inside. He was sitting on his wooden chair by the table, wearing the black beret he usually wore, but something was wrong about the way he appeared. He was staring ahead but not looking at anything. I called to him again but he just nodded his head and didn’t respond to my urgent enquiries about his condition. Then suddenly he spoke.
‘I’m cold, so cold!’ he said.
He then just gently collapsed forward and laid his head on the kitchen table, which was covered in worn, flowered oil cloth.
I stood there in a sort of paralysis, not wanting to move, until Mrs Angus, his cleaning woman, breezed into the room. She took everything in at a glance, immediately understanding what must have happened.
‘Go and be about your business, lad,’ she said to me and I ran to tell my mother.
I later learned that Mr Markham had suffered a kind of illness which my mother called a ‘stroke’ and had died shortly afterwards. His married sister came to claim the house and one day, when I saw furniture from the house being loaded into a cart, I went into the yard and asked a workman if he’d seen the cat. He told me that I’d better ask inside. Just then I was confronted by a large woman who demanded to know what I was doing.
‘I’m looking for Roo, Mr Markham’s cat.’ I then explained to her how I had known Mr Markham.
‘Well, boy,’ she said in that haughty way that some adults use to address insignificant children, ‘I do not want my brother’s cat so if you like it then I suggest you take it otherwise I’ll have it put away.’ With that she stomped back into the house and disappeared, leaving me standing in the yard. Workmen kept pushing past me as they carried one item after another from the house out to the cart and kept telling me to ‘Mind yourself’ and ‘Get out of the way.’
Deciding to be bold I sneaked into the house and began looking for Roo. Since the sofa had already disappeared along with the cat’s cushion I couldn’t think where to look for him. Suddenly I heard a screech as one of the furniture removers stood on Roo’s paw. This was accompanied by a curse from the workman and a sorrowful looking Roo limped into sight.
‘Come on pal,’ I said. ‘You’re with me now!’
After a brief discussion my mother agreed to let me keep Roo but with the proviso that she didn’t know what my father would say about it. She also added that she had no housekeeping money to spend on feeding a cat and so I quickly agreed that he would share my meals.
Later that week, one day when I was alone in the house and was busy reading my Dandy comic, there was a knock on the door and Mr Markham’s sister stood there looking down at me.
‘My brother’s will has just been read and he left you £50,’ she said. She then thrust an envelope containing pound notes into my hand and walked away.
My mother was out shopping so I decided to keep the money a secret until I had decided what to do with it and immediately hid it in amongst my comics in a cupboard upstairs in my room. The next time I went to the post office I would put the money in my savings account, which already held the grand total of seventeen shillings and sixpence – everything I had managed to save so far.
The following day when I came in from school my mother was waiting for me and beside her sat my father, wearing his ‘Day of Judgement’ face. Spread out on the table was the £50 which my mother had discovered when she was tidying my room.
‘Where did you get this money from?’ growled my father.
‘It was from Mr Markham. He left it to me when he died.’
I didn’t see the slap coming but I reeled and was knocked to the floor by the blow.
‘You liar,’ he shouted. ‘You stole this money from that neighbour’s house, didn’t you? You took the money from where the old man kept it, didn’t you?’
My father refused to listen to my protests and urgent explanations. Still dizzy and feeling sick from the smack, I was grabbed by the ear and marched into the backstreet where my father banged on Mr Markham’s back door. Eventually the old man’s sister opened the door in answer to my father’s loud thumping. It clearly emerged in his conversation with her that I was telling the truth – not that he was placated in any way by that information.
‘So you thought to keep it hidden from me, you greedy little sod, in spite of the fact of what it costs me to feed and care for you. Well, mister, that is the last you’ll see of this money. It can go a part way towards your upkeep from now on.’
Luckily my mother hadn’t told my father about Roo, so I sneaked him up to bed that night and in the semi-darkness told him all about the events. The big ginger tomcat liked a comfortable life and spent most of the daytime sleeping. He preferred to roam the streets and gardens at night but he was always there in the morning awaiting his breakfast. In the end, despite my best efforts to rehabilitate him, Roo would not stay with me. He was not partial to eating egg and chips nor did he relish homemade broth. It pained me to see him go but I was pleased to learn that he had decided to take up residence with a retired couple in a house not far from our own. I’m sure Mr Markham would have been pleased. I rarely saw Roo again but sometimes I caught sight of him high up on a backyard wall looking very superior. I do not think he thought much of me or my diet.
As for my £50, my mother saw little of it and the bookmakers no doubt profited the most from it. I respected and admired Mr Markham and it was generous of him to leave me some money. I still remember many of things he said to me. One of them was to save my pocket money and buy books because ‘books are the keys to learning.’ Another thing he told me was the only real sin in this world was when people made war on nature.
‘Remember,’ he said, ‘if you destroy creatures, trees and plants then you destroy something in yourself. Humanity is as much a part of nature as the birds and the butterflies.’ Later in my life his words found resonance for me in the words of the Indian philosopher Satish Kumar, who said that we are not life separate from nature, we are nature.
I took these words to heart and they remained a significant part of my thinking for the rest of my life. Mr Markham was a very wise man, far superior to my teachers at junior school who seemed obsessed with religion and rote learning. I hated school but I had a high opinion of Mr Markham, a dignified but unpretentious old man in a black French beret who took the time to talk to a curious boy. You can never tell who lives across from you and what surprises each day might bring.