David moved in to Withington Rd.They soon fell into an orderly routine. He was a kept man, and went in to the University each day fighting Medieval Latin as he researched Anselm of Canterbury, while Judy earned his keep. He now cannot remember what his underlying thesis was, but it must have been a good one. It was not until February 1965 that he got a job as a Junior School Teacher in Openshaw. Phew! Judy carried on abstracting away.
They were active members of the local Moss Side Labour Party, attending Ward Meetings with commitment. In 1964 Moss Side had a Tory MP with a strong anti-Black message. This went down well with some members of his local poor White Constituency. Flats were routinely advertised with the message “No Blacks. No Irish”. Then they started looking around for a house to buy. They discovered Glossop in Derbyshire where you could buy a terraced house for £800.00, and came upon a village just before you reach Glossop on the train – Broadbottom in Cheshire. The County boundaries wander around quite a bit in that area.
Broadbottom was ideal – it was on the Glossop-Manchester Electric Train route, had an active Methodist Chapel, a Coop, and immediate access to the countryside. However the house prices were steep. A terraced house there cost over £1,000, so they scraped together a deposit of £150.00 and bought 9, Market Street on a Local Authority mortgage.
Judy enjoyed life in the village. She would go to the weekly whist drives in the local Conservative Club, attend Chapel and Labour Party meetings, and shop at the Coop. Trafford Park, Manchester, was a long way to travel to, so she left AEI and got a job in the Wages section of British Rail where she administered the extraordinary Railway pay structure.
The railways were torn apart following the application of the Beeching Report which closed lines down wholesale, and the move from Steam to Diesel. People who had once been Firemen (as represented by Aslef – the Association of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen) still had their coal-shovelling perks, and people who worked on lines which had closed had their pay adjusted in their favour, including in their hours the travel time to their new place of work. It was impossible for anyone to earn a basic wage after all the adjustsments had been made to reflect their personal history. Calculating wages was no straightforward task.
And then the world changed. In about July 1965 she found out she was pregnant. She mentioned this to her husband who missed a good night’s sleep. The next time this would happen would be on the night of December 18th 2018. She failed to keep him informed of the daily progress of the pregnancy, but that was OK. She always wore a large coat – quite possibly the same one she was wearing when she first met him in 1961, so that when she appeared later in the village with a baby in a pram, everyone was amazed.
Now the birth of her son was in this wise:
Throughout her pregnancy Judy had never felt better. She felt no arthritic aches and pains. On Sunday 6th February 1966, David was preaching at Tintwistle, just over 3 miles away. They walked there and back. On the evening of the 7th February 1966 Judy thought the birth was imminent. She packed up some clothes in a suitcase and got the next train with David from Broadbottom to Glossop. There they walked to the maternity unit, and David got the train back home. He went to school the next day, and at the end of the day telephoned the nursing home from school to discover that he was the father of a boy. He went straight to Glossop from school to find Judy and the baby lying in a bundle. Presumably the birth had been straightforward as she never said anything about it. Ever.
The next part of the story is rather sad, so if you are of a sentimentally weak disposition, you do better to skip on the the next section which is much less tearful.
The baby was known as Fred. Nothing wrong with that. But she found being alone at home with a baby, even one called Fred, unbelievably difficult. Soon after the birth her hands began to close up. She was later told that during pregnancy the body naturally produces cortisone, and this caused the feeling of well-being she had experienced. After the birth, her Personal Cortisone Factory shut down, and her body began to exhibit withdrawal symptoms. Fortunately Fred (later known as Philip after his Uncle) could not be bothered to be uncooperative, but she still found it difficult managing to open and close the nappy pins that held him together. And then there was the coal fire which she had never got the hang of lighting. This is something that David always thoroughly enjoyed doing, but one day the fire went out, and she could not re-light it.
She went to see her GP about her fingers, and he was concerned that she should not get pregnant again. And her fingers continued to close. David observed this weekly deterioration, and imagined that she must be eaten up by the thought “Where will it all end?“. He did not say anything about it at the time, but when he asked her much later whether she has been demoralised over the way things were going, she said it had never occurred to her. After 6 months her fingers were seriously deformed.
A consultant plastic joint specialist advised that she should let him reconstruct her. She went to the specialist unit in Buxton, where he fixed her thumbs so that they would lose all their articulation, and inserted plastic joints in her fingers. He then rigged up a cradle over her hands to which each finger was attached while she mended. The experiment was a complete failure. He discovered when he tried to insert the plastic joints that her bones are like Cheddar cheese. They simply crumbled when he tried to encase them. While she was in hospital, her mother gladly looked after Fred in Leeds and made sure he was called Philip. One Sunday her parents came across from Leeds to Buxton, put him down on the floor, and he walked to her across the room. This was for the first time. Those of you who know about these things have a good idea about how old he was.
Judy discovered while in hospital that a lot of the patients had been prescribed Cortisone as a wonder arthritis cure, but the long time side effects were disastrous. Wounds would not heal. She made a conscious and deliberate decision never to have anything to do with the medical profession again. She would manage the discomfort caused by arthritis with aspirin. “I can cope with pain“. We leave this episode with a 27 year old young woman, a well-meaning but pretty hopeless husband, fingers that don’t work, and a growing baby. It is not going to be easy looking on the bright side. But …
jbrip 