17

Ewan found that taking the outreach session had left him drained and exhausted. He’d participated so deeply in the class himself he felt like a gagged cat; desperate to yowl but compelled by his own instruction to an ordered dignity. He’d tried to follow his own edicts to the letter, but all he felt was pain. How demanding and tough the McEwan School was. It hurt. It hurt so much he needed morphine. He wanted to clear his desk, to run away and disappear forever into the Deben mist.

But he knew, without doubt, that his methods were successful, and the whole purpose of Waldringhythe stemmed from his innovation and direction. At Christmas and Easter he received hundreds of cards from past patients, each with personal messages of thanks and stories of an enriched life. All of them from Joe Public, the root and branch of life, toilers in the field of the ordinary, who had gritted their teeth and got stuck in without any prior knowledge of navel-gazing. They’d struggled like fishermen in a storm, but for the most part had endured the pain barrier and been brought to peace. He looked at his watch. Just after four. He produced his mobile phone.

‘Liza.’

‘Good evening, Ewan. Jacob is sound asleep.’

‘How are things today?’

‘Fairly calm. Good pain control. He said if you rang to say Ikh hob dikh lib.’

‘Tell him I love him too, and I will come and see him soon. Goodnight Liza.’

Rising from the chair he stumbled out of the room and shakily climbed the staircase to his bedroom. There, he prostrated himself on the floor before his Madonna and began to intone his usual words. ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…’ but he had to stop. He opened his eyes and looked up at the image of Crucifix Man hanging on the wall. The means that had, forever, set him apart from the rank and file of the priesthood and had ensured his place in twentieth-century history. A brave pioneer with the audacity of youth and the resolve of a warrior. Was that young man really this broken heap of weakness and despair? Rising up onto his knees, he tried another traditional prayer. ‘Behold, O Kind and most sweet Jesus, before Thy face I humbly kneel…’ but trying to continue was pointless. His purpose on earth was shot away like a clay pigeon, blasted into sharp fragments and falling fast to ground. His palms and the small of his back ran with sweat as his own words intoned: to know yourself is to understand yourself, and memory is the only key. With fading spirit he continued his odyssey, now knowing his faith was no longer with him.

September 1978

Ewan had visited his mother daily in the psychiatric unit, but, due to his youth and inexperience, he found them excruciating to endure. The unit purported to be bright and relaxed, with cheerful staff cracking jokes and treating their charges as if they were all completely normal. But in reality the unpredictable behaviour of the patients made Ewan nauseous. They rocked, they gaped, they dribbled. They slept, they snored, they wet themselves. They wailed, they screamed, they spat. They twisted their hair to baldness and occasionally exposed themselves.

Sometimes she wouldn’t recognise him, sitting wordlessly rigid with her head stuck firmly into her neck; pop-eyed and fearful, as if menaced by a terrifying spectre. Sometimes she’d be distressed and agitated, shouting about ‘the buggers,’ and slapping the arms of the chair in frustration. But mostly she was fairly lucid, greeting him with a wobbly-headed wave and demanding news of the Abbey people. Days like these gave him hope that she would soon ‘be better’ and she could return to Waldringhythe, but her consultant psychiatrist explained that her mood swings were consistent with a deep psychotic illness and discharge would only be considered if she could be meticulously medicated and under constant supervision. Ewan had thought, in his simple and naïve way, that Sister Wagstaff and the local district nurse would be able to cope with her, but it was only when he discussed this with Father Paulinus that he heard the bad news.

‘Ewan. This may come as a huge shock but we’re being forced to close the school. Far fewer parents are looking towards a strict religious education these days, and registrations have been seriously falling off. Your father was a terrible loss to us, as he’d become our driving force in trying to prevent closure. Thinking up schemes and plans, like getting local authorities and the diocese to fund scholarships, taking students from overseas, and developing summer sports camps. He even suggested that we should take girls and non-Catholics, but the Archbishop vetoed that as far too radical to our traditions.’

‘My mother and I hadn’t heard a whisper,’ Ewan said.

‘That was typical of your father. Loyal, discreet and wholly professional. He’d formed several committees and worked on report after report, but the intake for next year is far too small to continue. We’re deeply in debt and the school must close immediately. I can only pray that the Abbey’s magnificence is saved for the nation.’

‘Father Paulinus. Do you think this stress contributed to his heart attack?’

‘Undoubtedly, Ewan, undoubtedly, and in view of this, the Bishop has agreed to fully fund your mother’s care for the rest of her life. We’ve just heard that The Sisters of The Rosary in Spitalfields can offer her a permanent home.’

‘That’s such good news, Father Paulinus. It’s a great relief to me. I’ll write to the Bishop and thank him.’

‘Will you still take up your place at St Scholastica’s?’

‘Definitely. Now I know my mother’s future is secure I can accept the place. Studies commence in three weeks.’

‘I thank God that you’ll be joining us in the priesthood, Ewan, and we welcome you with all our hearts.’

Ewan had dreaded telling his mother that she couldn’t return to Waldringhythe, but he’d been supported by the Bishop, the kindly Mother Superior from The Sisters of The Rosary and Father Paulinus. ‘So I’ll be near you in London then, son?’ she asked gruffly.

‘Yes, Mum. I’ll be able to pop in and see you quite a lot.’

‘And is there a garden to sit in? Can I wear my own clothes? Can I make a cake? Can I knit? Can I take Iggy-Piggy?’ The spirited Sister Concepta took over, giving out an enthusiastic spiel about all the home comforts they would provide for both her and her elderly, arthritic dog. ‘And is there a typewriter? I must have a typewriter.’

‘I’m sure we can find you a typewriter, Mrs McEwan.’

‘Good. Ewan and I have a gae lot of work to do.’

‘And what sort of work is that, Mum?’

‘You know what we’ve got to do,’ she screamed. ‘We’ve got to nail the bastards. Get something done. Bring the buggers to book.’

The gentle nun soothed her with well-meaning words and talk quickly turned to recipes and knitting patterns, but she wasn’t to be distracted. ‘You all want me to keep my mouth shut, but I won’t. Ewan knows what I’m talking about, don’t you, dear?’ Unseen by his mother, he shrugged, but she reached out and grabbed his hand. ‘Read it,’ she pleaded. ‘I wrote it all down. You’ll find it under the bed and every single word is true.’

On returning to Waldringhythe, Ewan reached under his mother’s bed and withdrew a dusty cardboard folder labelled ‘Strathburn.’ He sat on the bed and, with a sense of dread and responsibility, began to read the neatly typed pages.

29 July 1966

To Mr. Archie Dungannon, the Member of Parliament for Strathburn

This report is a truthful record of my own personal experiences and I am willing to testify this in a court of law.

My name is Jean Morag McEwan, (née Anderson). I was born in 1929 and brought up in Ardneath, a small town on the west coast of Scotland. During the war, a great many local people were employed at the Strathburn naval base near the town and in the summer of 1944, six girls, including myself, were recruited as a team. We were all school-leavers aged around fourteen or fifteen years old. The work we were attached to took place in three very large concrete buildings, situated in a wooded area a mile up the coast from the naval base. It was obvious we were working for civilian scientists, and the most senior was called Dr Frydenberger. We called ourselves lab assistants, but all we did was wash glass and metal ware, so we were really just domestic helps.

Apart from us, no other outside personnel were employed. In the mornings we had to report to the naval base to be signed in, and we would be driven up to the site in a truck. We had to sign a paper to say that we wouldn’t talk about our work, but a lot of that went on in the war and we didn’t think it was odd. None of us knew what was going on anyway, nor were we interested. It was just boring war work and we got on with our jobs. All it entailed was to go around with metal trolleys, collect up the dirty equipment and take it back to a washhouse. Some of it was so big it took two of us to load it up, and for those things we had to use a hose and a broom.

After a year the war ended and, of course, that was the end of our jobs. My parents sent me to finish my education at a boarding school near Stirling, and I then got a place at a teacher training college in Glasgow. In 1951, a couple of years after I qualified, I married a fellow student, Duncan McEwan. I became pregnant straight away, which we were delighted about, but I lost the baby. For the next nine years I suffered miscarriage after miscarriage, but we never gave up hope. Eventually I carried a child to term and our son, Ewan, was born on September 9th, 1960.

Shortly after his birth, my husband was offered the deputy headship of a boy’s Roman Catholic School, near the city of Auckland in New Zealand, and we left to start a new life. We settled down as a happy family, but when Ewan was four he suddenly became ill. He was diagnosed with a vicious form of leukaemia and died three weeks later. His death was a horrible tragedy for us, but we bore our grief with great support from our religious beliefs and church community. However, we came to feel very isolated and homesick, so we decided to return to the United Kingdom.

A few days out on the boat journey back, I became very ill. My medical condition was so acute I was airlifted and hospitalised in Australia. I was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy. It was then that the surgeons discovered my other ovary was cystic, and I would thereafter be infertile.

Once back in England, knowing we would never become natural parents again, we applied to adopt a child. Last year we were delighted to be offered a five-year-old boy, whom we renamed Ewan as well. At the same time my husband was appointed head of the English department at Waldringhythe Abbey School in Suffolk, where the three of us happily live today.

Earlier this year I returned to Strathburn to attend the funeral of my mother, my last surviving parent. Whilst there I became re-acquainted with Mrs Rhona Patterson, the mother of Janet, one of the girls I’d worked with during the war and my best friend from school. Naturally, Mrs Patterson had heard of my son’s death and was very sympathetic, but was delighted to hear I had now adopted a little boy. Our conversations took us down memory lane, but it soon became clear that happy stories of domestic bliss were not to be exchanged. It is the information she gave me that form the basis of my report.

In the twenty years since the six of us girls had worked together, three had already died, one of thyroid cancer and the other two of leukaemia. One (her daughter Janet now living in Canada) had had multiple miscarriages like myself but no live births, and another had been unable to conceive altogether. We agreed that these experiences were more than coincidence. Mrs Patterson said she ‘smelt a rat’ and wondered if we’d been ‘poisoned’ up at the naval base. It was then I formed the conclusion that we must have been exposed to nuclear radiation through our wartime work.

I would thus like the following points to be the subject of a public enquiry.

1)   Due to their working as domestic servants at the Strathburn Naval Base, between 1944 and 1945, six young women were exposed to nuclear contamination.

2)   That three of the girls have already lost their lives to cancer, and the surviving three, Janet Black (née Patterson), Rhona Ellis (née Cuddy) and Jean McEwan (née Anderson) are living under the future threat of it.

3)   Janet Black suffered multiple miscarriages and Rhona Ellis has been unable to conceive. This in turn has been responsible for them not being able to enjoy the normal rewards of family life.

4)   I myself, Jean McEwan, also suffered multiple miscarriages before my only child, Ewan Duncan Anderson McEwan, was born. This child died at the age of four from a vicious form of leukaemia, and I believe him to be a victim of radiation, congenitally transferred to him by myself.

I attribute all of the above to be directly caused by Dr Frydenberger’s wartime work, which must have been ordered and funded by our own government, or by the allies.

Please will you respond to this report in writing? I would be grateful to you for an appointment to meet and discuss the contents of this report.

Jean McEwan

Ewan had read the unworldly, simplistic report and allowed the sparse pages to drop from his hands, thinking that they should land like concrete slabs onto his knees. He knew that some sort of radical reaction was required of him. That he should leap up, with fire in his belly and a metaphorical gun in his hand. To rush out like Che Guevara and blast at the establishment, until what he’d read was heralded in six-inch headlines on the front of every newspaper in the world. But although he knew what he should do, he also knew, with a sense of failure, that he would never be able to behave in the way his poor troubled mother wanted him to. All over the country the voices of his own generation were heard, either in the crazy clothes of glam rock and punk culture, or in the irreverent lyrics of pop songs. Life was a gas and drugs were cool, but he didn’t belong to this normal, happy band of fun-seekers who thumbed their noses at authority and challenged the establishment. The only concession to his peer group was to grow his hair to his shoulders, but he wasn’t really one of them and never would be. Fashion and music and the exaggerated shenanigans of his school friends were just things that happened to them. He listened and smiled and joined in the fun of laughing at their exploits, but he had no feelings of jealousy or that he was deprived in any way. Reading the report had certainly made him feel something, but it wasn’t for revenge or confrontation. He just wasn’t a radical. His only response was of the humanitarianism and altruism of a priest-in-waiting. Priests didn’t hurl bombs. Priests pacified. Priests loved. Priests offered support. Priests forgave.

When his mother had talked to him in her muddled, incoherent way about the report she’d screamed at him to ‘nail the bastards. Get something done. Bring the buggers to book.’ He now felt as if he’d been saddled with an inescapable burden and, being her only link to the sensible outside world, was duty bound to do something. The only problem was that ‘something’ was all or nothing.

Clearly, in its present form, the report was useless. There was no scientific or medical evidence, no detailed research and no copies of archived government papers that documented any sort of wartime nuclear activity in the area. His mother had prepared the report as an account of the truth as she knew it. In her innocence she probably thought that this would be enough to engage the enthusiastic interest of an elderly Liberal backbencher, who had no desire for controversy and rarely showed his face in the House of Commons. The only reply she’d received was from a civil servant thanking her for her letter, saying that the contents ‘had been noted.’

He contemplated for days what his response should be and if he could possibly fulfil any sort of promise to his mother, but his procrastination brought no decision. No decision meant that he would do nothing, and thus he put the report back under the bed. If his mother mentioned it again, as inevitably she would, he would have to pat her hand and appease her with the sin of a white lie: That he was doing what he could.