"Tartan Blanket" (circa-1968)
From the day their mother and father informed family and friends that their daughter, Victoria had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, it took less than four months before her battle against the disease finally ended and her life slipped slowly away.
In the last few days of her life her body had been reduced from a nine stone beautiful young woman to a weak and helpless skeletal frame. With skin hanging like soft paper tissue from frail bones, she was unrecognisable and resembled a woman more than twice her age.
Ellen Brand told friends and relatives that Victoria was in so much pain and suffering that when her life ended it was a welcome relief.
After the funeral Ellen fought with her own recovery. But after too many sleepless nights, too many pills and too many severe bouts of depression leading up to, and after her daughter's death, she eventually lost the fight and spent the rest of her life lost to pills and despair.
Eddie Brand was no stranger to death. He had seen enough during his National Service.
He had endured the pain, the sorrow and the anger when the life of a friend or loved one is unexpectedly taken away. He was also aware that when it happens we always look for someone to blame, and that someone is usually that devout man in heaven. But even after losing too many friends in World War II and spending too many sleepless nights drinking and cursing at a bible, he wasn't prepared for the loss of a child.
If he had remembered about the heater not working in his father's Rover 90, he would have worn a leather jacket over his thin cotton shirt.
The cold weather never seemed to bother his father. His shirt unbuttoned at the front and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding a cigarette.
If the truth were known his resilience was probably the reason why he hadn't replaced the thermostat in the car. But nothing seemed to bother him. Even his deformed left arm didn't prevent him from becoming a tailor.
The badly scratched tattoo on his father's left arm was a permanent reminder of a heavy drinking session during his National Service days. He told everyone it was a scorpion, but with his deformity it could easily have been mistaken for a Lobster.
It was quite bizarre to think that he had gone all the way through World War II relatively unscathed. But when the war ended, his father and six other troops were driving through France in an army vehicle when the driver - who was apparently drunk at the time - collided with an obstacle at the side of the road. After losing control of the steering wheel the vehicle turned over and landed in a ditch. The six soldiers were thrown from the back of the vehicle and other than a few cuts and bruises they were relatively okay.
His father was less fortunate. After falling under the weight of the vehicle his left arm was crushed beneath one of the wheels. Medics told him that the soft ground probably saved him from losing his arm.
The one with the tattoo.
After driving for almost twenty-minutes neither of them had spoken a word. But with the age divide and nothing in common, conversations between fathers and teenage sons were always at a premium.
But although they didn't talk very much he still had a lot of respect for his mother and father, knowing how difficult it was during their upbringing, providing food and clothing for him, his brother Frank and his two sister's Victoria and Eve.
His parents were both humble people from working class backgrounds. They had no proper education and in those pre-war days they were expected to leave school at an early age to earn money to support their own parent's modest wages. After leaving school at fourteen his father worked as a trainee tailor and his mother worked as a seamstress.
Married at nineteen, by the time Ellen Brand was in her mid-twenties she had given birth to four children. With six mouths to feed his mother and father worked harder than ever to provide the family with the best opportunities possible. And although they were deprived of some material goods, they always managed to get by.
During his early childhood he had fond memories of his mother and father working tirelessly on a 'Singer' sewing machine until the early hours of the morning, making suits or altering clothes for friends and neighbours, desperately trying to earn a little extra cash to supplement their modest income.
They made their regular day-to-day clothing that kept their children looking reasonably respectable. They even made their school uniforms from left over material that they had suspiciously acquired from previous jobs.
And they always made sure their names were written inside.
"How's the job going?" his father enquired, through a cloud of cigarette smoke, the sudden break in silence, forcing a stammered reply.
"It's...Its, okay."
"Sticking in at college," his father asked. "It was good of your boss to let you take a day off work to attend Newcastle College."
"Yes," he answered to both questions.
"You're training to be an architect?" his father said, with pride in his voice.
"Building surveyor," he quickly replied.
"Same thing... I tell everyone you're an architect."
"Are they paying you enough?" his father boldly asked.
"Good enough, considering what my friends are earning," he answered, hoping this would be the last of his father's interrogation.
It wasn't.
"When you're going through an apprenticeship son you're expected to do all the menial tasks at work. But don't let that boss of yours give you all the shitty jobs to do."
"Fucking shitty jobs... Don't let him give you all the shitty jobs."
He wouldn't dare tell him about the shitty job his boss had recently volunteered him for.
Apparently someone using the men's toilet felt it necessary to smear the walls of one of the toilet cubicles with human excrement, and the only way they were going to catch the perpetrator was to hide someone inside the toilet and observe the comings and goings of everyone using the facilities.
The humorous remark of the boss telling him they were looking for someone who didn't bite their finger nails did little to help the mindless hours and boring days sitting on a wooden stool inside a cleaner's cupboard, peeking through a grille in the door, a furtive voyeur waiting for the 'phantom crapper' to decorate one of the toilet cubicles.
A week had passed. There were lots of visitors in and out of the toilet. There were lots of bladders emptied and plenty of bowel movements, but unfortunately no desecrated toilets.
It was late one Friday afternoon when the sound of heels tapping across the ceramic floor tiles broke the boredom. He peered through the grille in the door. He couldn't believe his eyes. Nicola Thompson, a young and very attractive girl from the admin office walked into a cubicle and closed the door.
A few minutes later the door opened and she was gone.
He slipped out of the cupboard and opened the toilet door.
The walls of the cubicle were smeared in human faeces and a signature of brown hand marks decorated the inside of the door.
He quickly retreated back to the cleaner's cupboard returning to the cubicle with a bucket of water, a cloth and a bottle of disinfectant.
It took less than ten-minutes to clean the cubicle and return to the sanctuary of the cupboard.
He never asked her why...Only a psychiatrist could tell her that.
"Is that another new shirt you're wearing? I hope you've written your name inside," his father chuckled, blowing smoke against the windscreen.
"Oh Fuck," he cursed silently. Not the story about writing their names inside their clothing.
He knew that if he didn't change the subject quickly he was going to hear the story for the millionth time. But all he could think about was Nicola Thompson desecrating the toilet cubicle and he had no intention of betraying her dark obsession to his father.
"I knew you would do well son," he smiled, tapping his fingers across the steering wheel.
"Did I ever tell you the story about when you were all growing up and you wondered why I had written your names inside your clothing."
He frowned. He cursed silently. He knew he couldn't prevent the inevitable narrative.
His father's declaration was always said with conviction and guidance.
"It will encourage you to strive for better things in life," he said, a thin smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"If your names on the outside of a building you are considered a rich man. If your names on the inside of a building you are known to be a working class man. But if your name is on the inside of your clothing, you will always be classed as a poor man."
It went quiet for a few minutes, his father deep in thought, puffing away on his cigarette, another philosophical statement hanging on his lips.
"From the day we're born we travel on the conveyor belt of routine. Working class...Middle class...Upper class...Rich and poor, all striving for better things in life... The only thing in common is that we all fall off the end smelling of piss."
