CHILDHOOD
I was born in 1924, I think at home – that is in a traditional workers’ red brick Victorian terraced house, close to Liverpool’s dockland. I was told I was born very weak and survived only through extreme care. The birth was said to have nearly killed my mother – who suffered cardiac insufficiency from stenosis of the mitral valve, a condition irremediable at the time, a complication of rheumatic fever infection contracted in childhood. I remember her often appearing to be dangerously unwell. At any rate she suffered dramatic ‘attacks’ during rows with my father. She died in 1936 at the age of forty-four, when I was not quite twelve. An unhappy marriage and presumed inability to endure another childbirth may account for her intense and restrictive devotion that made me a lonely, cosseted, only child, forbidden to play with neighbourhood children in the street outside, and warned that I was too delicate for school sports. The slightest ailment caused domestic upheaval. At around six or seven years of age, a feverish illness with swollen cervical glands kept me unwell for some weeks. Mother thought to prepare me for the worst by explaining that I might be called by Jesus to a wonderfully beautiful heaven. Strangely enough, I think I was more comforted than frightened at the time; fear of illness came later. The practice of calling in the family doctor for the minor sore throats, in case it was the start of the dreaded diphtheria, was not reassuring. In point of fact, I have enjoyed good health for most of a long life, although even now the slightest sign of something wrong sets up a secret panic.
Mother was the daughter of a Scottish engine driver who had emigrated to Argentina, where he was killed in a rail crash when she and her twin sister were two years old. My grandmother returned with the children to England, where she struggled to support them by taking in washing, an occupation thought shameful. (No Laundromats in those days!) Before her marriage mother worked for a local family with a cake shop, becoming at the same time an unofficial ‘nanny’ to their children and remaining in touch with these ‘higher class’ people till her death. Their daughter sang a Handel aria at her funeral. Grandmother lived with us until mother died; a sombre figure always in black. She never left the house, ostensibly because she walked with a pronounced forward stoop that was blamed on her years of drudgery bent over a wash tub. Mother was religious and a churchgoer, brought up as a Wesleyan Methodist, a sect renowned for its puritanical stance. She and Grandmother disapproved of alcohol and gambling and each year prayed for the victims of the Grand National horse race, when many poor people would lose money on bets.
Father was the son of a bricklayer who had framed certificates to prove his skills and who was also a religious martinet. Accordingly, father was brought up strictly; all pleasurable activity on Sundays was forbidden, including reading Sunday newspapers. In 1909, at the age of fourteen, father was required to leave school to work as a labourer in the Cunard shipping company’s warehouses. He attended night school, becoming sufficiently numerate and literate to obtain office work in the company. His career was interrupted by service as a private in the trenches in the First World War, an experience he rarely talked about. Thereafter, seemingly by sheer hard work, he gradually climbed the promotion ladder until he was a superintendent, in charge of recruiting the catering staff and ordering all the provisions for the company’s trans-Atlantic liners. His job meant everything to him, and he fell into a depression when he had to retire. Although liked and respected, he never passed the barrier into senior management, in those days reserved for educated public school types. Nevertheless, his industry and continuing financial generosity gave me both a university education and subsequent financial help.
I can only guess at the reasons for my parents’ marital problems. Certainly Mother and Grandmother disapproved of father socialising in bars, although I never saw him drunk or remember him bringing friends home. The outstanding problem was that he had taken a mistress. I remember a screaming row because she had found a ‘French letter’ in his pocket. It was only years after that I understood this was current slang for a condom. Father was a quiet, unassuming and well-meaning person, unstinting in his material support for the home. That he also had a mistress was out of character. She was a Welsh publican’s daughter, a handsome woman, but totally uncultured, which rendered her airs of boastful grandeur particularly absurd. Perhaps there was an attraction of opposites.
Though bathed in love and attention while mother was alive, I was missing out on some essentials. Mother and grandmother dominated the scene. Visitors to the house were a rarity, except for mother’s twin sister who called occasionally. She was living in poorer circumstances, and was reportedly beaten by her drunken husband, but was surprisingly cheerful and outgoing. I heard her remark once that my mother did not know when she was well off. One time she surprised me sitting alone outside amusing myself watching the movements of some ants. I was terribly embarrassed, but she smiled encouragingly and gave me to understand that playing with ants was OK. My earliest recollections are all to do with the immediate family of adults.
Father was little to be seen during the working week, but he was caring enough, teaching me ‘Meccano’ construction and taking Mother and me on week-end bus trips to the nearby seaside town of Southport. There I was treated to only the gentlest of funfair rides, most often the Fairy Caves. Much of the time was spent sitting in the spectator area of the outdoor swimming pool, but with no thought of having me taught to swim. I have never overcome the fear of immersion. Watching the bathers, for what seemed hours on end, bored me. The only mild excitement I recall was Mother spotting the family doctor accompanied by a lady not his wife. Opportunity for socialising with other children, except during school hours, was non-existent. Outings included walks in the nearby park and, a bit later on, trips to the local cinema, accompanied by mother, or lone visits on Saturday mornings to children’s film shows. Walking alone to school or the cinema was not then conceived as dangerous. Protective advice was limited to orders not to speak to or accept sweets from strangers, the reason for which was never explained. The most exciting events of early childhood were occasions when an Irish family took pity on the lonely infant next door and took me with their own children, heaped onto their crowded motorcycle and side-car, to picnic in bluebell-wooded countryside. There were hours of anxious and often disappointed waiting at weekends hoping they might ring the doorbell to take me out.
Domestic routine was monotonous; parties and holidays away from home were unknown. Radio was available, but television was not yet heard of and computer games were in the far distant future. Comforts were basic, with an unheated toilet in the yard outside and a metal bath for washing inside. Lighting was by gas, with incandescent mantles ignited with matches. Cooking was on a coal-fuelled iron ‘range’. Grandmother would get up very early to clean out the ashes, start the fire and put on the very slow-cooking scouse stew (potato and neck of lamb) which was our regular fare. We lived entirely in the kitchen; I hardly remember the ‘front room’. Poor diet and lack of exercise may have helped me to become a clumsy fat boy, hopeless at any form of sport or games. Later on, I developed a real phobia about the balancing and somersaulting that were included in compulsory physical training at school. Strict economy was enforced at home, not only because the looming economic depression and fear of the awful consequences of unemployment was weighing heavily on the working class, but because my mother, anticipating an early death, did not trust my father to provide for me properly. When she died, it emerged that she had for some time secretly squirreled away a portion of her housekeeping money in order to make a will leaving me a few hundred pounds.
For one unused to interacting with other children, life at infant and primary schools was not as terrifying as might have been expected. The kindergarten, close to the house where I was born, was tiny and undemanding, run virtually single-handed by a religious woman. I remember bible stories and parlour games, but little free interactive play. Leaving infant school at age seven coincided with improved family fortunes and a move a few miles north to a smarter area in Crosby. The first choice had been a rambling old house towards the nearby sea front, but mother had vetoed that, fearing I might be at risk when she heard that a death from diphtheria had occurred there.
The house in Crosby was very different from what I had been used to; semi-detached with a bathroom, electricity, telephone and a garden. On a preliminary visit there, I recall being taken round the garden by the previous owner telling me the names of the flowers. It was a suburban street, not much used by children at play. The regime of over-attentive care continued, and I became a self-centred child prone to sulks, for instance when Mother did not want to take me to the local cinema.
Entering a nearby preparatory school was a revelation, because it included playground fun and games and the chance to make on-the-spot friends. I was sent for piano lessons to a sympathetic teacher who had to suffer my prattling away about what went on at school. As with many shy individuals, once the barrier of diffidence is broken, there is danger of flooding. Wisely, the teacher advised that my heart was not in the lessons, but at least I learned to read piano music.
Worried about every aspect of my welfare, mother had taken pains to teach me to read at a very early age, so when first admitted to the private preparatory school in Crosby, I was considered ‘advanced’, and remained so on entering Merchant Taylors boys’ secondary school, a short walk from home, where day boys greatly outnumbered boarders. This venerable establishment was struggling to preserve the traditions of its more famous and grander offshoot in the South. The uniform included those high, stiff, starched collars, seen today in period films and plays. They chafed the neck and had to be taken to a Chinese laundry. Discipline was aided by senior boys, styled prefects, and there was an emphasis on school teams, school ties, school songs, and an Officers’ Training Corps. The establishment is still going strong, though without its public school status.
At secondary school my obesity and physical ineptitude soon attracted teasing and bullying. Years before, when walking by the school playing field, where boys were running around in gym shorts, mother had told me I was not strong enough for that sort of thing. Participation in team games was compulsory and my hopelessness at everything was an embarrassment to whatever group I had to join. Strangely, I do not recall being desperately unhappy about a persecution that consisted of persistent ridicule more than serious physical cruelty. In a perverse way it was better than being left out, and I did make one or two friends. Teachers must also have perceived me as an oddity. I was upset when one of them told me – perhaps as a friendly warning – that there were some teachers who “would not touch you with a barge-pole”.
Not long after my entry into secondary school, Mother was admitted to hospital. Taken to visit her, she tried to reassure me when I was frightened at seeing her hand wrinkled and immersed in a bowl of liquid – perhaps to help some restricted circulation. Within a week or so she died suddenly from an embolism. The news was brought to me one morning while I was still in bed, by Father, accompanied by a tall, dignified old lady in black, Mother’s former employer. I was more shocked than anything, but felt I should cry, which I soon did. Though I was genuinely grieving, at the same time I was hoping for greater freedom. Grandmother moved out and soon after Father brought his mistress home and married her.
I was glad to meet my stepmother and looked forward to a new life. She was past child-bearing age, so I remained an only child. Troubles started quite soon. She was continually disapproving, although I never quite understood what I was doing wrong. I suppose I was sulky and difficult on finding I was not enjoying the hoped-for new freedoms. She imposed strict controls, but more for her own satisfaction than concern for my welfare. Doubtless she resented having to be in charge of a budding adolescent and was jealous of my father’s concern for me. For a long time I felt guilty about the situation, until with the passing years I learned more about how other people viewed her behaviour. She introduced a boy of my own age, consistently referred to as her brother. It eventually emerged that he was in fact her son, who had been left to be reared by his grandmother in a family situation that was clearly dysfunctional.
One memorable incident occurred when my stepmother returned home to find a girl with me. For reasons spelled out later, the situation was entirely ‘innocent’. I think I was showing off my boys’ toy chemistry equipment in the then car-less garage. In uncontrolled fury she screamed at the girl and threatened her before throwing her out. Subsequent appeals from the girl’s mother suggesting that they were a respectable family and there was nothing wrong with a normal friendship met with obstinate rejection. My father’s reaction to these conflicts was to talk with me indulgently in secret and to give me things that I was not to mention to my mother. The situation had its compensations. It meant that during the ensuing years much time was spent away from the parental home, in lodgings or elsewhere, so that, despite continuing shyness and an anxiety-prone temperament, I had to learn to look after myself.
During school holidays I was farmed out, first to my ageing maternal grandmother, who was living alone in a remote cottage in North Wales, lit by oil lamps and served by an outside WC. In winter it was cold, and many evening hours were spent wrapped up in bed reading by candle light. In those days I was an avid reader of fiction, especially boys’ stories of fat boy Billy Bunter and the pupils of Greyfriars School, popularised by the long defunct ‘Magnet’ magazine. I was fascinated by the accounts of upper-class boarding school life and by the portrayal of a then fashionable macho culture and a muscular Christian morality. I also devoured the novels of Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope. It was the complex plots of the Victorian writers that attracted me; an appreciation of the social commentary came later. When I had pocket money I used to buy these books very cheaply at a second-hand shop in Crosby. During stays at Grandmother’s cottage the only other distraction was a bus excursion to the seaside town of Rhyl, where many solitary hours were whiled away in cinemas and amusement arcades. These are favourite venues for predatory paedophiles, but I never encountered any, or indeed anybody else, perhaps because of my shy, unwelcoming demeanour.
One other solitary habit I had during the early ’teens was cycling, wandering for hours without any particular aim in mind, save to see what new place I could discover or how far I could go before having to turn back. A favourite route was along the banks of the Leeds and Liverpool canal, where I did once observe a man lying in the long grass masturbating. I cycled past without pause, but the image stuck in my mind for a long time. On another occasion I was fascinated on passing a group of naked boys, just emerged from bathing in the canal. These reactions foreshadowed realisation of my sexual orientation.
After Grandmother’s death, I used to be sent to stay during school vacations with Mr M, a wealthy widower in Wrexham. My father knew him because the company of which he was Managing Director had dealings with Cunard. From time to time he invited my parents to accompany him on sight-seeing trips round North Wales in a smart, chauffeur-driven hire car. I was taken along too, gazing at the beautiful mountainous countryside through the car window. We used to stop at luxury hotels and consume the six-course meals that were a feature of those days. Mr M led a rather lonely life in his big house and seemed to like having me around. Being waited on at meals and seeing him ringing a bell for a servant when he wanted anything was a new experience. It was, however, a situation that lacked the company of peers. These visits carried on to my later ’teens. Trying to be helpful, Mr M introduced two girls to keep me company. We never got beyond platonic friendly outings, although they made some suggestive overtures. On one occasion I took them to a picturesque riverside restaurant in the country, where Mr M had previously taken me and my parents by car. We were turned away ignominiously because we had arrived on bicycles. This reinforced a feeling of class inferiority and social awkwardness.
A serious, obedient and attentive pupil, I usually performed above average in classroom tests and examinations, preferring maths and science to languages and literature, possibly because the latter were less well taught. Many of the boys came from families where there was more appreciation of vocational studies than of art. The class for German language was so exceptionally unruly that the master was often near to tears. Learning was at a minimum, and the poor man committed suicide during the year he was supposed to be teaching us. The conversation at home was never about books or cultural matters; visits to plays, concerts or exhibitions were unheard of, and the only books around were those I got hold of myself. Nevertheless, my mother had been and my father continued to be convinced of the importance of education and determined to help me “get on”. They had more respect for school rules and teachers’ authority than most working class parents. On the great occasion of the maiden voyage of the first Queen Mary liner, my father wanted to take me to Southampton one Saturday morning to give me a tour of the ship. Only a few hours off school were needed, but instead of just taking me, he applied in advance and was refused. He then visited the school and pleaded that this was educational and the chance of a lifetime. At the last moment I was released and permitted to depart.
Around the age of fourteen my parents had the idea of sending me away to a distant boarding-school. Father, generous as always, was prepared to pay for entry to a grander public school. Interviews were granted at a number of famous places, including Rugby. Surprisingly, despite my parents’ Liverpool accents and obvious unfamiliarity with public schools and my lack of any sports record, at least one such school was prepared to take me (I do not remember which). Everything seemed settled until one of the teachers at Merchant Taylors, learning that I was leaving, approached my parents and explained to them, what should have been obvious, that I was not the type to be suitable or happy at boarding-school. Rescued from what might have been either a catastrophe or possibly a radical cure, their next solution was to put me into lodgings, an arrangement that continued intermittently for the remainder of my time at school and university.
For my last year at Merchant Taylors I won a scholarship, and father no longer had to pay school fees. It was suggested I should stay on another year to try for a scholarship to Cambridge. Had I done so and succeeded my experience of Cambridge University could have been very different from how it turned out, but I was keen to move on and opted for immediate entry to Liverpool University to study medicine. It had been thought I might study chemistry, which would have been helpful were I to seek a place in Mr M’s business. However, the war had already started and I was still terrified at the prospect of the physical training demanded in the forces. I was under age for call-up and medical students were reserved from service until they qualified. I admitted to nobody that this was one reason for my choice. Fear of the real dangers of warfare was nothing in comparison to this phobia. Air raids had not bothered me, I was amused at my stepmother’s panic when an incendiary bomb rolled off the roof of the house, and I quite enjoyed occasional ‘fire-watching’ on top of a Cunard warehouse with a view of the bombing of the docks. Ever indulgent, my father went along with the choice of a medical education, undeterred by the years of fees and maintenance expenses involved.
When talking among themselves, gay men have the boring habit of endlessly exchanging early sex experiences. I shall have to do the same, otherwise it is impossible to convey honestly the context of subsequent life events. Infantile sexual sensations and curiosity are universal, but in a puritanical environment children soon comprehend that such matters are secret and unspeakable; so it was for me. While at kindergarten, I used to have fantasies of little boys being buttock-spanked or spanking me, never expressed in word or deed, and not understood as sexual. So far as I know. I had no comparable real-life experience to set this off. Although there were girls at the kindergarten, they never featured in this fantasy. At school, from a quite early age, certainly before any obvious physical signs of puberty, boys would chase each other and when one caught the other he would try to wrestle him to the ground and proceed to grab his privates. When caught, I would put up the resistance expected, but the sensations experienced were exquisitely pleasurable.
One day the headmaster was unexpectedly passing by and caught a pair of us engaged in this rude wrestling game. He told us to call at his study later. I was petrified with fear that he had seen exactly what was going on. I did not understand why, but I felt we had somehow committed an enormous transgression and would be disgraced and expelled. In fact that could indeed have been the case. Although I had no experience of it, in those days draconian measures could ensue when childish homosexual “indecencies” came to official attention. Fortunately there were some teachers, probably including this one, who would turn a blind eye. He let us go with a minor caution about nuisance behaviour. Such is the strength of sexual urges, this fright failed to put an end to the activities. In fact, throughout life, though in other contexts cautious and compliant with rules, I continued to take serious risks in regard to sex.
At age twelve I used to achieve sexual sensations when alone in the bathroom by wriggling about naked while straddling the edge of the bath, eventually producing a first ejaculation. I soon discovered how to masturbate in the normal way. With the coming of puberty, activities at school became more openly sexual. On the back row in class, under cover of the desks, boys would put their hands in each other’s trouser pockets and grope. In empty classrooms or behind the bicycle sheds or the sports pavilion, small groups of boys would begin horseplay that would end up exposing someone’s genitals. I joined in quite happily and felt no particular guilt about these clandestine sex games. More secretly, pairs of boys would go off alone together for sessions of mutual masturbation, but I did not participate in this, having no willing friend. Sex of any kind was a taboo subject, never discussed with adults, and homosexuality was a concept unknown. The gay-bashing prevalent in schools today was absent. Bullying was directed to boys who were timid, unsporting and insufficiently macho. Participation in rough-and tumble sex between boys did not seem to matter.
The teasing and mild physical bullying I suffered at school would sometimes take on a sexual character, when I would be pounced on by several boys trying to open up my pants and feel around. In truth, I enjoyed this, though I always struggled and pretended otherwise. On some occasions, an older boy and his companions (I still remember their names) would drag me (or was it lead me?) to some little-frequented spot, and while one of them would hold me from behind in a bear hug another would open my pants and masturbate me to climax. One time a boy who did not normally participate in such behaviour came by and was invited to join in. He declined, calling out that I should complain to the teachers. Of course I did not do so. Despite the spectacle of outrageous abuse, my apparent distress was a sham. One incident, however, was rather more than I bargained for. It happened in a full classroom while waiting for a class to start. Some boys grabbed me and held me down on the floor while one of them fished out my genitals. To my embarrassment I ejaculated uncontrollably in front of everyone. When allowed to get up I had to rush to clean up the spilled semen before the teacher arrived. One of the bystanders expressed some sympathy, but pointed out that I had “asked for it” by taking part in sexual games.
Although I found contact with certain boys particularly desirable, sexual encounters were essentially physical incidents with no thought of special friendship. An exception occurred at around fourteen when I made friends with a classmate who shared an interest in cycling. His family, parents and older brother, were going on a summer holiday to Wales and to my great delight I was invited to join them. He and I were to spend a day cycling from Liverpool to their holiday apartment in Moelfre Bay on the island of Anglesea. We shared a bed and spent much time together roaming the coast and cycling around, stopping to sun ourselves in secluded spots. Physical intimacies began, but he resisted genital play and sought anal contact, not real penetration, but just poking the anus with stalks of grass. School sex had not included any anal erotic activity, but I enjoyed the new experience. It did not outlast this holiday, however, and it was many years later that I was introduced to anal intercourse. Other aspects of the holiday were a disaster. My chronic shyness in front of my friend’s parents made mealtimes a pain. My lack of sporting skills became spectacularly evident when, in full view of his father, my inability to row properly left my friend to struggle single-handed with a current that was preventing us coming back to land. The climax came when I overheard his parents discussing why they would never invite me again. That distressing confirmation of inadequacy heralded the end of my first experience of a sexualised friendship.
In the later years at secondary school, talk about sex with girls became commonplace and I started to worry about my lack of attraction to them. The struggle to become ‘normal’ began. I cannot quite remember how, but I managed to meet up with a girl my own age and ask her to come with me to the cinema. Probably I had asked permission to fondle her, because I heard afterwards from another boy that she had told him that the trouble was that I asked first instead of getting on with it. I did, however, get to know a somewhat tomboyish girl who had no hesitation inviting me home where a group of youngsters used to play the board game Monopoly. We were in the garden one day with another boy who was dressed in a kilt. Some suggestive horseplay began, but nothing much happened. In any case I was much more excited by the kilt than the girl. This was the girl who was to be driven away by my stepmother. Not until a long time after, when a medical student, did I have anything approaching heterosexual contacts.