That'll Be the Day

That'll Be the Day

Looking back, it’s not surprising that I was feeling bored and frustrated as I’d spent almost ten months confined and alone in a dark space. It was very damp there too. But at least it was warm, unlike the dirty industrial town beyond that clung to England’s north-east coast like a barnacle to the rim of a steelworks’ waste outlet pipe, braving all the weathers that the North Sea hurled at it. In terms of comfort I had little to complain about but the lack of stimulation of my brain was bothering me. I wished I’d had a book with me, but without any light it would have been impossible to read. A miner’s lamp would have been handy.

I was desperately lonely at first but, as the days and weeks passed, my sense of hearing became more acute so I could make out some of what was going on beyond the walls that imprisoned me. A meagre companionship, I supposed. I heard people talking about the great Stanley Matthews playing his last ever game of international football, and somebody had won a big bundle of cash on something called the Premium Bonds for the first time ever. Britain’s Prime Minister (an old gadgey by the name of Harold Macmillan) had told all his mates during a political speech he’d made in a town called Bedford that ‘most people have never had it so good.’ I hadn’t had the opportunity to see Middlesbrough during my period of incarceration but I could smell the coal dust and iron ore that hung in its heavy air and sense how grim the place must have been from the blast furnaces’ vibrations that reverberated around my pokey hole. So I understood that his ‘most people’ weren’t the people who lived and worked in the vicinity of where I was being held captive.

The same crackly voice that had made those announcements also reported that the Government had proposed in its Wolfenden Report that homosexuality should no longer be an offence as long as it was done between two consenting adults and in private. I was in a place more private than most people could ever imagine but I had no idea what homosexuality was, and I had nobody to do it with even if I had known. I felt the same way about a pastime called jiving that was apparently increasing in popularity by the day despite being deeply frowned upon by some of the more conservative members of the populace.

Sometimes I’d hear music from outside and it seemed as though the whole world was swaying from side to side as people sang peculiar muffled words to accompany it. That’ll Be the Day by Buddy Holly and the Crickets was the number one record. I didn’t know what that meant but the man who had broadcast the information seemed quite knowledgeable on the subject, so I took his word for it. His name might have been Guglielmo Marconi. I’m afraid my recollection of events so long ago has become a little vague.

I wasn’t mistreated, I was comfortable, the temperature was just right for me and I had plenty of food even though it was very bland and repetitive. Was it just my paranoia-fed imagination or was the place where I was detained getting smaller? Perhaps I was getting fat. Although the meals provided weren’t very appetising they were always there, and they seemed to be very nutritious. But what were fish and chips? I heard people outside getting excited about having some for their tea because it was Friday.

There wasn’t room to swing a cat, whatever a cat was. The voices outside frequently mentioned a cat. They even spoke to the cat. What did it want for its dinner? Did it want its tummy rubbed? Did it want to sleep in the chair by the fire? All it had to do was come to mummy and she’d give it a kiss. This creature seemed to be enjoying a much more eventful and satisfying life than I was. I became insanely jealous of a mysterious animal I had never seen, and curious to know what it looked like. Sometimes I’d get so frustrated and angry by the restricted space, the solitude and the feeling that nobody cared that I was stuck in there, I’d give the wall a good hard kick. Outside I’d hear the people laugh, so I’d kick again and again until I was tired and fell asleep.

I considered breaking out but I had no idea how to do this, or what I would find and what I would do once I’d been liberated. From the little I knew about escape tunnels, digging one seemed impossible. I had no social skills and I was probably unable to stand on my own two feet. It was as if I had been institutionalised in a place where there was no institution.

On one occasion, after one of my furious outbursts, I was so exhausted that I slept right through an afternoon, the night and late into the following morning. So weary was I that I didn’t move a muscle for almost twenty-four hours. I clearly remember it being a Wednesday because that was the day that a man always knocked loudly on a door before asking for money for milk. This seemed to me an altogether strange way for a visitor to behave, but someone foolishly gave in to his demands. And then there were other voices that I’d never heard before as the walls of my cell shook violently, suggesting that the earth beneath me was moving or that the whole prison in which I was caged was being transported to somewhere else. I had been dozing on and off for quite some time but this suddenly had me wide awake and more than a little concerned.

Peace and tranquillity were eventually restored for a while and interrupted only by yet more strange voices. Then, all of a sudden, an enormous metal blade slashed a hole in the wall of my living area and I realised that I was feeling the effects of gravity for the first time as the liquid that had caused all the dampness gushed through the gap and out into the world beyond. Seconds later, giant hands appeared, grabbing hold of me and dragging me outside where I was so overcome by shock, and dazzled by the bright light, that I screamed in terror. My umbilical cord was cut and taken away from me. I’d been hanging on to it for as long as I could remember to make me feel safe and to cancel out any feelings of danger. I didn’t like this change of environment one bit and couldn’t wait for the violence of the moment to subside so I could go back to where I’d come from.

I heard several calls in unison declare ‘it’s a boy!’ I had known this for months and had wanted to tell the people outside whenever they referred to me as a fertilised egg, an embryo, something approximately the size of a broad bean, or a foetus. It had all been very confusing especially, it seemed, for them.

Two pairs of hands cleaned me with a cloth, wiping sticky slime from every inch of my fragile little body. They then wrapped me in a blanket, which came as quite a relief as I had been completely naked in a room full of strangers. At this point I was introduced to a woman who apparently was my mother. Making acquaintance with her was impossible because she was unconscious. How on earth had she managed to sleep through all that commotion? Was it the strong drink? I was so traumatised I was sure I wouldn’t sleep again for at least six weeks.

There was talk of me having a father but there was no sign of him being there because they all believed he was at work, but he was on his way. In the pub more like, I thought to myself, even though I hadn’t a clue what a pub was. This parental neglect was something that I suspected I’d have to get used to. Why had they bothered to have me if they couldn’t be bothered to be there when I arrived. I needed to meet their cat and compare notes.

Eventually the woman woke up and she was asked if she wanted to hold me. She nodded her head and I was passed to her without having any say in the matter myself. I was surprised to see that she wasn’t black. All the time I’d been inside her belly (or the uterus, I later learned from the reproduction chapter of a hamster owner’s guide book) I’d been able to see only black, but on the outside she was pink. And I wasn’t black either. I was purple. Had someone chosen that colour from a Dulux chart?

She looked at me and cried a little so I assumed she didn’t like me. She had quite a lot of blood on her clothes so I felt quite justified in not being altogether keen on her either. And then she said, ‘Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to be here two weeks ago. You were supposed to be a Libra but now you’re a Scorpio!’ This was my first experience of a reprimand and something that I duly noted. I didn’t like it at all. So from that day onwards, to avoid further unpleasantness, I’ve always made absolutely certain that wherever I’ve been going, I’ve arrived bang on the dot if not ridiculously early.

After that poor start it was probably more than a year before we had a conversation together. My frustrations turned to those caused by my inability to speak English, or any language. What did all that ‘coochie coochie coo’ nonsense mean that I heard from the big people at least ten times a day. Were they spouting any old shite that came into their heads in an effort to shut me up? I wasn’t the least bit happy with the situation and they often made it quite clear that they weren’t either. I don’t suppose that my inability to control my bladder or bowels helped matters. And there was the vomiting too.

Those around me who weren’t making their ridiculous noises were talking about wetting the baby’s head. So I was a baby now! Did they not realise that not just my head but my entire body had been immersed in amniotic fluid since the day I was conceived? I couldn’t see that I would ever get on with these awful people and just wanted to get back inside and have something nice from the placenta for my tea.

‘We’re going to call him Turlough’ the mother-woman proudly proclaimed. Another change of identity, I thought, and looked for something to kick in the absence of the wall of the womb.

As my mother held me in her arms, the melodic sound of That’ll Be the Day floated from a box on a table by her bed and she sang along to it. With my infant brain developing rapidly I had a better understanding of the concept of wireless radio by then and also my hearing had improved significantly. So on the day that I was born, that being 6 November 1957, I clearly heard for the first time that the last three words of Buddy’s song were ‘when I die’.

But quite miraculously, I’m still alive.

Image:

In the darkness of my mother’s womb, this is how I envisaged my umbilical cord. My own photograph, taken in the shipyard in Belfast.