As I tuned back into the everyday world again, I realized that I had made up my mind to do some serious studying because, before too long, I would be taking the new O-level exams, which replaced the old School Certificate. The exams would mark the first and possibly the most important milestone in my future career.
On a cold, dry Saturday morning one October, I took a break from a hard spell of studying to walk along the lonely beach at Tynemouth in order to clear the cobwebs from my mind. It was strange to be without an animal companion in my life, I reflected as I walked on the sand, but I didn’t think there would be another opportunity for animal friendship before I left home for good. But then life has a way of soon proving you wrong.
The sea was crashing and roaring, stirred up by a fierce biting crosswind which was reviving my weary frame of mind. Then I saw it. At first I could not work out what it was that lay ahead, blowing about on the sand. Could it be plastic bags and newspapers? I hurried forward, but when I grasped what it was, I really didn’t want to know. Flapping about like a piece of garbage in the strong wind was a large bird of some kind. It was hurt, most probably wounded by gunshot. Earlier I had heard the muffled sounds of shotgun fire, probably carried across the water from some wild fowling site on the South Shields end of the coast. The bird grew frantic as I approached. What to do? Numerous possibilities jumped around my mind, The most feasible was just to walk on by. The cold and shock would most likely kill the bird soon enough, or else a dog would quickly despatch it. However, I simply could not leave a wild thing in jeopardy.
Ruefully stripping off my anorak to catch hold of the bird, I finally gathered it in after a few attempts. It was possibly some kind of goose, being too small to be a swan and too big for a duck. I noticed that one of its wings was not working and had blood on it. Carefully securing the bird in my coat, I walked back to the station at Tynemouth as quickly as I could. On the way I spoke softly to it, trying to calm its struggles. No one saw me as I boarded the train for Newcastle, although once on board a couple with children gave me a hard look and then moved seats to be further away.
In Newcastle, I tried to board a bus for Blaydon but the conductor wouldn’t let me once she saw I was carrying a big, live bird, which had suddenly started shrieking with pain or fright or maybe both. The passengers who were already on the bus stared aghast at me through the windows. So I started walking. This was not quite the way I had intended spending Saturday but once I had become involved I felt obliged to see it through. My burden seemed to grow heavier with each step I took.
When I was halfway along Armstrong Road, near the munitions factories, I heard a grinding of brakes and a van pulled alongside me. It was a Co-operative painters’ van. The men recognized me, having seen me with my father over the years, and invited me inside for a lift. They were a welcome sight even though I had to withstand some ribald comments about the lengths to which I apparently had to go to find something to eat but it was good-hearted humour. When they heard that I was taking my invalid all the way to the Bramers’ farm at Axwell Park, they insisted on driving me almost to the farm gates. I gave them a huge thanks and staggered into the yard with my ward.
Mr Bramer came out of a shed exclaiming, ‘What you bringing to me now boy?’
In a disused stable I unwrapped my coat which by now was covered in bird droppings. Once loose the bird made a panicky run for the darkest corner of the stall. Mr Bramer shoved his cap back over his head – his usual gesture of bemusement with which I had become very familiar.
‘Well now, my lad, I believe you’ve got yourself a goose and she’s in pretty bad shape,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt about that.’
‘What should I do?’
‘Well, I think the best we can do for the moment is to leave the creature be. We’ll give her some water and leave best alone. Later, if she’s still alive we’ll see about cleaning that wing but I reckon she’s had about as much as she can take and needs rest and quiet. So let’s be away.’
In the farmhouse I recounted the tale to Mrs Bramer, who asked if I would call her Florence from now on. She said her husband’s name was Gordon, but he liked to be called Bob, the same as his father. Over a plate of liver and onions, we discussed the bird. Bob said he was sure it was a female Canada goose because he had seen flocks of them flying southwards all morning.
‘She must have been shot somewhere along the South Shields coast after feeding along the broad mudflats near Roker. She’s a fine bird and the morning will tell if she’ll survive the shock and the wounding.’
‘That was a fine speech from you, no matter,’ Florence said to Bob, pressing more food and drink on me.
They wanted me to stay the night but I had to get back to my school books. I said that I’d call round during the week after school finished. Before I left, Florence insisted that I should take a nearly new waterproof anorak that had belonged to Jenny, her daughter.
‘Best it has some use,’ she said, and in any case she had put my old one on the fire since it was ruined with goose droppings.
It was late afternoon when I arrived at my grandmother’s house, and she chastened me for missing lunch time. All was forgiven when I told her the story of the goose.
Studies at school were assuming great intensity as we approached the examinations so it was Wednesday before I had time to call at the farm. What I found there really surprised me. Florence and Bob had worked wonders with the goose, which was now game enough to strut around the yard feeding on whatever she could find and holding her damaged wing out from her side to protect it.
‘Me and the missus fettled her right enough,’ said Bob. Florence had bathed the bird’s wing in antiseptic solution whilst Bob had cut away the damaged flight feathers right down to the follicles in order to encourage new feather growth. ‘But she’ll need to winter here with us cos it’ll take until spring for the new flight feathers to let her fly.’
Having warned my grandmother that there was the possibility that I would be staying the night at the farm, I gladly accepted the Bramers’ offer to sleep over. Before dinner I tried to make friends with the goose but she was having none of it. Try as I might, I couldn’t get hold of her. Bob chuckled as he watched my efforts and unable to stand it any longer he swooped down on the goose and grabbed her by the neck.
‘Take her with you into the shed and get acquainted,’ he said, and shoved the goose into my arms.
She flapped around with her good wing, whilst careful to nurse the injured one, and tried her best to escape from my grasp. Inside the outhouse where she was being kept there was an appreciable amount of space furnished with a table and shelves on one of the walls. Once I set her free the goose clambered on to a high shelf and stared at me apprehensively. I had filled one of my jacket pockets with grain before attempting to catch her and now I offered it to her in an attempt to make friends. Making a soft shush-shushing sound I spread some of the grain on the table and stood back and waited. Nothing happened. She turned and looked at me and then at the grain but she never moved from her shelf. Then I tried my old ploy of tenderly talking out my feelings between me and the animal.
‘I’d like to pick a nice name for you. How’s about Millie? Would you like to be called Millie while you stay here with us and recover?’
I kept this up for another ten minutes during which time she didn’t move at all.
For dinner Florence had prepared jugged hare with new potatoes, fresh hand-picked peas and young carrots fried in butter. Whenever I think of the farm that I visited so often in my youth I recall the loving kindness of Florence and Bob Bramer but also the delicious homemade meals, which for me at that time were out of this world. They were simple country fare but they were based on fresh ingredients straight from the field and the soil.
After dinner I ploughed into my school work with determination to do well as the academic route represented my passport away from backstreet poverty, away from my father and away from the prospect of having to take a job with the Co-operative in Blaydon. I had to have a Plan B if I failed to do well in next year’s examinations, but all I could come up with was an idea about escaping to London to pursue my love of films, perhaps working as a tea boy for some company like the Rank Organisation.
Meanwhile, each day after school I cycled to the farm to see the goose, who appeared to be thriving. She had quite happily accepted the farm as her home. As well as feeding alongside the chickens and eating the grass bordering the hedgerows, which Bob insisted on maintaining for the wildlife, she was not averse to a swim in the duck pond. I copied Bob’s method of catching her, and then would try to stroke her whilst I was holding her. She had a beautifully coloured neck – bottle green with tiny gold and silver flecks. Her eyes were light golden which sometimes turned a slight tinge of green. She got used to me softly stroking her neck and talking to her, telling her how beautiful she was and how I was so glad that I’d been able to rescue her. Sometimes whilst I was stroking her she lapsed into a kind of trance and when I left her she adopted the regular goose sleeping position with her head tucked under a wing. After a few days she started responding more positively to me. Then one evening she at last took grain from my proffered open hand and cackled enthusiastically.
Bob knew all about wildlife and aptly summed it all up for me: ‘Each and every animal has its own special ways and they will not be rushed. They need time. We all need time to adjust to something new in our lives.’
Back at the stables, to which I still went at weekends, there had been a crisis. One Saturday night some of the young girl helpers, several of whom were classmates of mine, had organized a party with a horse riding theme and some of them had got hold of jockey outfits. During the celebrations some of the party, who had been drinking cider, began to circulate around the compound. Wildfire was still staying in her paddock before the move to Cumbria, and some of the girls went up to her in the spirit of bonhomie. At the sight of their jockey uniforms Wildfire suffered a sudden attack of fear and rage and started galloping around the paddock, kicking and screaming. Yet when Amanda and Vera, alerted by the girls’ urgent alarms, went to investigate, she was just standing there, trembling and sweating profusely, but docile.
When I heard about the incident, which no one at the stable could understand, I immediately linked it to what Anthony had told me about Wildfire’s experience at the horse-racing stables where she had been repeatedly beaten. The sight of the jockey outfits must have brought it all back to her. I think Wildfire’s memories of being badly beaten were just as vivid as my own.
I telephoned Anthony who confirmed my diagnosis of the trouble. He also congratulated me on having a successful trip with Wildfire and reassured me that the establishment at Ullswater was very professional and that she would be looked after there. He said they were coming for her on Saturday morning and perhaps I’d like to be there. I told him that I wouldn’t be able to bear it and that I was going to miss her terribly.
He laughed and said, ‘Animals aren’t worth getting sentimental about.’
I replied that I couldn’t be anything else and he laughed again, saying, ‘Then you’re going to suffer a lot.’
‘I already have but then I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ I told him.
‘You’re a fool, Denis O’Connor, but you’re a nice fool. Good luck to you.’
I went to say goodbye to Wildfire on my own. She whinnied and shook her beautiful mane in greeting when she saw me approaching. I hugged and stroked her but for once words escaped me. I fed her two apples I’d brought for her in silence. Then I walked away. I could hear her behind me as she followed me to the fence rails of her paddock and whickered after me but I could not allow myself to turn around.
For months whenever I was at the stables I avoided going anywhere near the upper paddock and refused to listen to any of the accounts of those who had seen her leave. I just stored the memory of her away in the back of my mind together with the family of other animal friends who already resided there. There was nothing else I could do. Someday, when I finally escaped my father’s house, I would keep my animal friends close and never feel the necessity to say goodbye. We’d be together for life.
My exam results duly arrived. With shaking hands I opened the plain brown envelope stamped with ‘Durham University Examinations Board’. My heart was beating so strongly that I could barely control myself. So many of my hopes and dreams were dependent on these results. Then I saw them typed out in front of me on yellow paper. They were excellent, even outstanding. I sank into a chair and let my breath go with a whoosh. My mother was overwhelmed and became tearful.
‘You must go and show your father. He’s working at Ebchester. He’ll be proud of you.’
I cringed at her suggestion and resisted complying for well over an hour while I allowed myself to bathe in the euphoria of what I had achieved: I would be able to study A levels in the sixth form, hugely increasing my chances of getting on the first rung to a good career. My father was the last person to whom I wanted to show my results but my mother asked again and, for the sake of peace between us, I eventually acquiesced.
I caught the bus to Ebchester with a heavy heart and finally located the workmen’s shelter near the Co-operative store where he was working. I remember to this day the look of ghastly surprise on his face when he saw me.
‘What do you want here?’ he said.
‘I came to show you my exam results. Mother thought you’d like to see them,’ I said, and tentatively handed him the sheet of yellow paper.
One of the other joiners, who had a son in one of the younger forms, looked over my father’s shoulder and whistled aloud when he read the results but my father only handed them back to me with a deadpan face and said, ‘Well, you’d best be on your way.’
As I walked away, feeling rather foolish, I head laughter coming from the workmen’s shelter. No doubt my father had found something amusing to say about the episode.
On my return, my mother urgently asked me what my father had said.
‘He hardly said a word, just as I’d thought.’
She said, ‘I’m sure he is proud.’
I couldn’t refrain from saying, ‘That man will never ever be proud of me and, mother, you know why!’
My mother’s face blanched as I spoke but I thought it was time to get things straight. She didn’t respond to the opportunity to tell me the truth. She never did.
Entry to the sixth form at Blaydon Grammar School meant that you could count yourself amongst the elite. I revelled in it and was bursting with pride. I was on my way and I knew it. The feeling of competence I’d gained with my O-level results accelerated my efforts to make good at the A levels and was further boosted when my form master said, ‘We’ve decided to enter you for a State Scholarship.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘It means that if you pass it well enough there’s the possibility of direct entry to an Oxford or Cambridge college with all fees paid and a handsome support grant of nearly £400 annually.’
For a while I was on a kind of high but I had severe misgivings about going to university at either Oxford or Cambridge. As far as I knew these were elitist places where a simple north-eastern boy would not fit in. I decided that I needed time to think about it and meanwhile I had yet to take and pass the necessary exams. Over the next two years I lived to study, which led a woman friend visiting my grandmother to exclaim, ‘That boy is suffering from Brain Fag!’
During this time I continued to visit Millie the goose and spend nights at the farm. On one of these visits I finally learned that the real name for the farm was ‘Willowbrook Farm’. It had originally been part of the Clavering family’s holding at Axwell Park Hall Estate but passed into the hands of old man Bramer during the First World War and had been inherited by the son of the family ever since, passing down to Bob and Florence Bramer. They received constant overtures from developers anxious to build new homes on the site as part of the post-war rebuilding policy, but so far they were determined to resist giving away their farm.
During the winter months Millie began to thrive and Bob remarked on how the new flight feathers on her wounded wing were already apparent. Sometimes she could be seen tentatively flapping her wings after breakfast with the hens. I praised her that evening, telling how she might be ready to rejoin her kind in the spring for the flight back to Canada. I had found out everything I could about Canada geese and discovered, as their name suggests, that they are from the Arctic, Canada and northern parts of the United Sates. Once they mate, they stay together for life. Millie had probably been gathering small fish and shellfish from the coastal mud flats when she was shot. I also read that Canada geese are often referred to as cackling geese. I had already found out why as she always greeted me with a series of high-pitched cackles, which became more pronounced once she spotted the grain in my hand.
After I’d fed her she often came to rest on my knee and I’d stroke her to sleep whilst telling her what a lovely girl goose she was and how much we all loved her. She never fouled my clothing but the shed was covered in droppings, which I had to frequently clean for the sake of hygiene. She loved me to stroke her long neck, with its white chinstrap and the silky green and grey feathers that tapered down to her plump grey body. After a few weeks she had learned to respond to her name, arriving with wing-flapping haste when Florence called ‘Millie, Millie’ during the morning feed.
I developed a steady rhythm of study in the sixth form and grafted for four to five intensive hours after lessons on most days. More often than not, I spent the time at my grandmother’s house, away from the blubbering of my sisters who were forever whingeing about something or other. When I spent the night at home I had to kneel on a cushion in my bedroom with my books spread out on the bed because the radio was always blaring downstairs so I couldn’t use the table in the sitting room.
Sometimes I worked until the early hours of the morning to finish a project and this caused my father’s anger to flare up. Whenever he noticed that I was still in bed in the morning he would take the prop – the long wooden pole that was used to hold up the clothes line – and bang it against my window. He could no longer get into my room to tip me out of bed as by then I had fitted a bolt to the door. It seemed that there was to be no respite to his loathing for me.
His dislike reminded me of an ancient folkloric tale that has circulated around the campfires of nomadic tribesmen since before written recorded history began. The story is known throughout Arab lands as the tale of the ‘Star Foundling’, and emerged out of people fearfully observing the nearness of the red planet, Mars, in the heavens. It’s also referred to as the mystery of ‘The Baby from Mars’. As told in its original form it describes how aliens from Mars periodically visit Earth to steal newborn baby boys and replace them with babies of their own. The changelings are unwittingly accepted at first but as they develop they become increasingly estranged from their adopted families and may even be rejected by them because they seem so at odds with the rest of the family.
The first time I came across this myth I clutched at it as an apt analogy for my own position within my family. Surely if there ever was such a case then I fitted the syndrome and could rightly think of myself as ‘a boy from Mars’.
Work studies at school became increasingly intense as the year wore on and I found time for little else. Christmas brought a round of parties held in other people’s homes, but not in our own, where a ragged little pine tree and some Nativity figurines represented Christmas festivity. My sisters did well for presents but, as had become usual, there was nothing for me. However, I would go around to my grandmother’s house where there were always new books and clothes for me, courtesy of Nanna and Uncle John. The Bramers bought me a camera, my first, and I stayed over with them on New Year’s Day. At a New Year’s Party at Nancy’s house I received my first ever kiss and I began to think that life was wonderful. I felt grown up.
I did not apply to either Oxford or Cambridge, which is something I have regretted all my life, but my inferiority complex still had some hold over me. Instead, I applied to Hull University because I had read that a former Oxford don was inaugurating an honours degree course in psychology there, and that was the subject I wanted to study. I was interviewed and accepted on the course, depending on my A-level results. I was advised to gain more experience of life first, so I agreed to do my National Service before taking up my degree studies in October 1955.
As spring approached the Bramers and I were fascinated to watch Millie practising take-offs and landings. Her flight feathers had grown back well and, as we watched her flying around the farmyard, we remarked upon her natural-born resilience and inner sagacity.
Bob said, ‘That bird is getting ready to join the spring exodus. She knows, and God only knows how she knows, that it’s time to fly to Canada. She’s awaiting the call of the wild flocks that will soon be flying overhead and one day she’ll join ’em.’
Now, whenever I spent time with her in the shed where she was kept safe from foxes during the night, she was agitated and seemed as if she couldn’t settle because the ‘call of the wild’ was reminding her that it was time to leave and savour again the sights and scents of home. It was my opportunity to view at first hand the power of instinct.
Soon I was yet again involved in the agony of swotting for exams, which made me miss Millie’s departure. According to the Bramers it was a late afternoon on a Friday in April. It had been fine, warm and sunny all day when Millie, who was resting on the farmhouse roof, heard the sounds of the flocks calling to each other across the clear blue sky. Florence and Bob heard it, too, as they had done many times in the past. But this year was different because Millie was having an ecstasy of cackling and running about, testing her wings and generally acting very excited. Another ‘V’ formation was just beginning to come over when she took flight.
‘She were as graceful as a big goose can be,’ Bob told me. ‘Up and up she flew and then something stopped her and she circled back over us calling and calling and it’s my opinion that she were looking for you because she knew it was final goodbye time. Even a goose has feelings and that bird had strong feelings for you, we know that.’
I felt like cheering but there was a large lump in my throat. ‘Did she make it right up to a flock?’ I asked with a tremor in my voice. It was Florence who answered.
‘Yes, I watched her through binoculars and she managed to tag on to the back of the V and then I couldn’t pick her out any more. You should be proud, you gave her back her life.’
‘Only with your help,’ I said.
‘She were a right good ’un and maybe she’ll come back to pay us a visit next year,’ said Bob, ever the optimist.
Florence looked at me and winked and thus Millie joined the ranks of my absent but dearly remembered animal friends.
The exam results were even better than expected and I wasted no time in informing Hull University. The day I received the letter from Hull confirming the offer of a place I also got my call up papers instructing me to join Six Training Battalion at Blenheim Barracks, Aldershot, on 15 October 1952.
The rest of the summer was spent reading and writing poetry, and walking out with Nancy, who had a place at Leeds University to read English. There was an endless round of parties where my friends all celebrated the end of school and the beginning of a new stage in our lives.
Then the fateful day in October arrived. My mother and my grandmother came to Newcastle station to cheer me on my way. My father, of course, was not there. Nor had he commented upon my acceptance at university. I now knew for certain that we meant nothing to each other and that any effort on my part to gain his approval, never mind love, was fruitless. Both of the women in my life cried and I nearly did as well. I was relieved when the huge train for London King’s Cross finally pulled into the station and I climbed aboard and found a seat. As I watched the faces of my grandmother and my mother recede, I decided that I hated goodbyes.
Crossing hectic London by tube I arrived at Waterloo station and immediately felt like a lost country boy in the melée of the busy station. Unsure where to go I approached two surly-looking West Indian porters and politely asked which platform I should be on for the train to Aldershot. One of them turned away from their conversation and said, ‘Can’t you read, man?’
I was taken aback by his rudeness for a moment, but then something in his words dawned on me. Boyhood was truly behind me. I was eighteen years old. I was a man now and, after what I’d been through, I could cope with anything. I suddenly burst out laughing to the porter’s bemusement. Yes, I was a man and I could read and I could find my own way anywhere. The future loomed ahead of me and I was heading into it with full confidence. I knew that I was already on the right path to an independent manhood. So let the future, whatever it held for me, unroll. I was ready.