Dear John,

You’ve been gone a long time now & while I tried to talk to you when you were here, I felt you closed that down at every opportunity.

so this is one of those letters I can never send.

the history as far as I know;

you grew up in cheshire, born in 1933. the youngest of the five surviving children.

life was uneventful being in the countryside the war was ever present but not the same as in cities. you first met your older brother when he returned from the war. in total you met him 4 times in your life.  from this I understand you as the baby of the family with little connection to your brothers & sister.

when you were 18 you joined the army: conscripted as was the rule then.

 I believe you went to Tripoli but I have no knowledge of your army friends or pictures of that time.

at 20 you were out of the army & looking for a job, your dad a signals box signalman, got you a start on the railways as a steam train cleaner. this being a good job then.

at some point you aged 21/22 met joyce taylor & began seeing her & she became pregnant & you married her as was expected at that time. she was a couple of years younger than you.

she had a daughter with you in 1954 & a son in 1956-who you felt may not have been your child but your brothers. joyce not being faithful was part of the breakdown of your marriage with her, that & she wanted to be out & about: dancing, drinking having a good time as young people do. you would come home from work to find her with a crowd of people or absent leaving your kids alone.

this enraged you.

I have a nighttime memory of you shouting at her, she was scared & asking me to get her the poker from the fire because you were going to hit her. another time she threw her shoe at you & it broke a glass pane in the door.

then one day she was gone.

you tried to find carers for us but none of that worked out & I went with my sister to a children’s home (for a year) which was frightening place, full of strange rules, violence & an absence of both of you. though you did visit once, the memory of you in a bright red waistcoat is my only remembrance of you from that time.

we came home to our house with a family in it: the beatties (who lived up to that name) a mum, dad & four kids. life got to be hell with them.

I was a bedwetter then, they would shame me for this, make me stand blindfolded in the hallway where he would punch me from angles trying to break me. this changed into holding sacks of potatoes, hot water bottles, kettles & clothing irons. if I dropped any of these I would be beaten.

or they’d force me to drink ‘rat tea’ in reality this was Bovril but aged 4 I did not know this & they’d chase me down try to force me to drink this & when I refused: beat me again.

I survived all of this & more while you went out to work.

a couple of years later you met Gill & I had hopes of kindness, a new mum, a fresh start.

meanwhile I was running away trying to find Joyce, miraculously for a 5/6 year old walking the streets a couple of times I did.

meanwhile we were forbidden at the risk of violence to talk/ask about her.

tbc