What You've Got Within You

5: Glasgow 1956

5Glasgow 1956

James Henderson was born on 20 May 1935 in the Vale of Leven Hospital outside Glasgow near the shores of Loch Lomond. He was the third child of John and Fran Henderson. His father was a butcher in the nearby town of Paisley. His mother was a midwife at the hospital. He had two older sisters, Rosemary and Kate.

The family lived in a clean, but meagre terrace, two hundred metres from the entrance to the Vale of Leven Hospital. The local pub was just around the corner. It was there that John Henderson celebrated the birth of his only son. He sat till closing at the smoky, front bar, downing pints of Younger’s Tartan Special with whiskey chasers, rambling on in high spirits about the future for his boy. John was a hard-working, deeply religious man. It was one of the few times he permitted himself the freedom to enjoy a special occasion and to venture an opinion about the future. It was rare for him to drink at all. He argued with himself internally about whether to enter the pub. His mates had done the same thing when their sons were born. Buoyed by the emotion of his son’s birth, it seemed like the right thing to do. His head told him otherwise the next day. John had a deep-seated belief in fate and was cautious to avoid interfering with its hold on his life, and the life of his family. This was a rare relaxation of his guard. He would never do it again. Fran would have disapproved if she ever found out.

John Henderson was too young to fight in the First World War. He was, however, just the right age to have his head blown off by a howitzer in France during World War Two. He would never know whether the beer-and-whiskey-forged omen he had for his son would come true.

After the war, life was tough for Frances Henderson and her three children. She needed them out of school and working so that food could be put on the table. Her daughters started work at the district hospital, first as nurses’ aides, later as nurses. Young James went off to the massive ship building works on the Clyde as an apprentice fitter and turner. It was filthy, demoralising work, but James was imbued with the same uncomplaining industriousness as his father. He had the same capacity for self-sacrifice to better the lot of his family.

The Hendersons survived. A simple, toiling, dourly content unit.

Eventually, Rosemary and Kate married local men who also worked on the docks. They moved into small, depressingly dark houses, and gave birth to many small, wiry children, destined to keep the cycle on the Clyde turning.

James finished his apprenticeship. He was a light-framed, stringy man, who would not have been out of place in the featherweight boxing ranks. He had coruscating, vivid, blue eyes, blonde, straight hair neatly parted, and a plain, not unappealing face. Despite the work he did, his skin was pink, perfect. Soaped and scrubbed, James positively glowed, smooth and touchable (at least to the local Leven girls). His forearms were sinewy and strong, his legs sure and agile. He was well-regarded by his employer as a skilful, reliable tradesman. By the age of twenty, he worked side-by-side with a team of welders, fitters, turners and boilermakers, building the clunking innards of big, steel ships. He worked in dark, confined spaces. The air was always putrid. It stank of oil, grease, the sweat of labouring bodies, and stale, panting breath.

That was on the good days. On the bad days, battalions of laggers would swarm into the hulls, spraying raw asbestos fibre on the bulkheads, and around turbines. Half-cylinders of pre-formed asbestos insulation would be placed around steam pipes and cemented together to form tubes. Loose, crumbly asbestos composition would be mixed with water in ten-gallon drums to form a slurry, which was then slapped on to the boilers and pipes around the tricky bends and switchbacks where the pre-formed cylinders would not fit. The air became an impenetrable soup. The asbestos fibres stuck in the workers’ hair, clothes. It irritated their skin, creating a prickly, itchy rash. On days like that, James Henderson would long for the end of the day, and relish the first deep breath he took above deck of the fishy, muddy stench of the Clyde.

The year James turned twenty, his mother died of lung cancer. She had smoked cigarettes since she was a girl of thirteen. Everyone did.

James found himself the sole resident of the house he had grown up in. It was a bleak, drab place. How had he felt such joy in it before? He sat at the small kitchen table after work one evening wondering what it was all about. He had worked five years in the filthy darkness of the docks. Both his parents were dead. His sisters were married with their own families. He had nothing but this brick, plastered home and a host of dismal memories. The cold fog of Glasgow crawled up the valley threatening to render his wintry life permanent. He smoothed the etched, wooden tabletop with the flats of his hands. Specks of food were imprisoned in the cracks. Ink and pencil marks from homework fading into the tan surface. He stretched his feet out onto the linoleum floor. The thick-soled work boots disproportionately large for his thin legs. He stared down at his legs, his feet, the patterned floor. Then he slowly gazed up and around the room. A clinical, demoralising little space. The odds and ends of daily grind. Sparse family conversations; greetings, goodbyes, the spit and splutter of bacon and eggs. The bubbling hiss and whistle for tea. It had always been a cold house, he thought. A cold, Spartan place. A miserable place full of death. And it too would be his own mausoleum. He could feel even then the faint, but definite, pull into darkness.

It was at that moment that James sensed the germ of an idea in his brain. He felt that he no longer wished to be part of the gloom hanging over the Vale of Leven or along the black waters of the Clyde. He no longer wished to feel marooned, alone, sad, in this sea of stern Scotsmen. He needed to escape, to get out into the world, to be part of it. He had to find a way out of this termitary. The oppressive tunnels and holes of the dockyards would kill him.

James Henderson let the idea grow within him. It divided and multiplied every day he travelled down to the Clyde in his overalls and boots. Then, one day, in the canteen, it burst out of his head and almost floored him. He read a notice on the information board. It said:

The Australian Government wants to bring out a Briton. It wants you! Come and live in the jewel of the Commonwealth crown. The Australian Government will assist suitable applicants to migrate to Australia. It will pay your fare, living allowances and find you employment. Do not be disappointed, apply now. Men and women with trade skills will be looked on favourably. Please contact….

James, of course, was Scottish. But he knew he was a citizen of the United Kingdom. His head started pounding, and his heart stopped, then started again with a jolt. He felt his world was spinning. And then the sensation abruptly stopped, and he gasped out loud.

Breathing heavily, James walked over to a table with his tea and sandwich. He sat on his own, thinking. He tried to work out why he had felt such a jerk. He was a simple man. He could not seriously hope to analyse the complex thoughts and emotions rushing around in his subconscious. He figured, however, that what just happened to him must have been pretty important. It was something to do with change, he reasoned. Something was urging him to alter his course. He paused, sipped his tea, took a contemplative bite from his sandwich, chewing slowly over events.

Slowly, tentatively, the picture took shape and gained clarity. The notice was directed at him. It was a direct, personal call to him. It came to him when he was alive with thoughts of escape. He needed to respond. He chewed further on his mouthful of bread and meat. Yes, there was no doubt about it. This was the opportunity he had hoped for. He needed to take it. He could work that much out.

After work, James went to the office identified on the notice. He was given some forms by a friendly woman, who asked him to bring them back when he had filled them in.

Four weeks later, he was asked to attend an interview in Glasgow.

Six months after that, in 1956 at the age of twenty-one, James farewelled his sisters, brothers-in-law, nephews and nieces, and left on a train for Liverpool and, after that, a ship to Australia. He took with him his modest savings, a few family photographs, his father’s posthumously awarded medals, and one third of the proceeds of the sale of his mother’s house. It wasn’t much.

He did not need to eat into his capital. The Australian Government had been true to its word. It paid the fare for the long voyage. He was granted living expenses until he started work. And he would be beginning his new job very soon after he arrived in Australia. The Government had fixed him up with a job as a fitter and turner at a mine in North Western Australia known as Disaster Gorge. He would disembark at the port of Fremantle, then travel by train to the township. His employer would be a large, well-respected company called V&L Ltd. Everything was arranged. He would be well looked after. He felt at last that he had a bright future.

James Henderson was very excited as he walked the plank up onto the ship, The Neptune. By all accounts, Western Australia was warm and sunny. Just what he needed.