Boy Number 26 Read online

  This book first published by Mirror Books in 2019

  Mirror Books is part of Reach plc

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  © Tommy Rhattigan

  The rights of Tommy Rhattigan to be identified as the author

  of this book have been asserted, in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN 978-1-912624-17-1

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

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  Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to

  reproducing copyright material. The author and publisher will be

  glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

  Names and personal details have been changed

  WARNING: this book contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse.

  For my beautiful wife and family – for the love,

  care and understanding.

  Thank you. x

  Oh Happy Day

  The playground of St Vincent’s Approved School in Formby near Liverpool is lit by a bright, early-morning sun. It’s 1966 and I am 10 years old. I’m not alone, though I wish I was. I am in the company of 47 other young boys aged between eight and 14, many of whom are in floods of tears. I, on the other hand, feel very happy. The unexpected news we’ve just heard from Sister Ignatius came as a pleasant surprise to me and the dozen or so boys who are not crying. And I am truly baffled as to how the events unfolding on this autumn morning could possibly have anything to do with the outpourings of grief I am witnessing from this bunch of wailing idiots.

  Any stranger happening by could be forgiven for assuming we are mourning the passing of a dearly departed friend, or that an outbreak of mass hysteria has suddenly swept over the whole show. But – though it’s true I only have a handful of friends (none of whom are dear to me) – I don’t think I’ve missed anyone suddenly departing from St Vincent’s Approved School, unless you count Sean Murphy, who did a bunk a few days back and hasn’t returned – yet.

  The cause of the mass hysteria was a surprise announcement made moments earlier by Sister Ignatius, Mother Superior of the Order of the Sisters of Mercy, and batterer of little children’s arses.

  She was standing on the portable wooden rostrum, used for outdoor prayers, looking down upon us like a saggy, red-necked vulture on the hunt for dead meat. And as the rostrum groaned under the weight of the hippo-sized nun, I muttered a silent prayer to Jesus, asking him to make the whole thing collapse. But, as usual, Jesus wasn’t listening to me, and the rostrum – creaking under its burden – held fast. “Quiet, children!” barked Sister Ignatius in her thick Irish accent. We had no idea what she was going to say next, but we knew it was big news.

  For the past few days, a rumour had been going round the school that an important announcement was on the cards. And along with the rumour came the usual gossip: Mr Guinness, the school’s 69-year-old storeman, was having an affair with 75-year-old cleaner Mrs Cuthbert, and both were going to be sacked; Sister Jennifer was up the duff and had been excommunicated from the church; Mr Sands, the school’s 80-year-old shoe repairer, had really died this time. There’d been many false alarms about Mr Sands’ abrupt end, which were understandable given how he would suddenly drop off to sleep at any given moment – midway through hammering a nail into the heel of a shoe, for example, or just as he’d taken Holy Communion at Mass. The fact we hadn’t seen him around for a few days added credence to the story, making it the likeliest of all the rumours.

  But, as usual, we’d all been wrong. The bombshell delivered by Sister Ignatius had been much better than that. “It saddens me ta have ta pass on this news ta yah all,” she began. “With the exception of the domestic staff, who’ll be retained at the school, The Sisters of Mercy will be leaving St Vincent’s, with immediate effect.”

  With immediate effect! That meant now! Today! Yippee! I’d been unable to contain my emotions and was clapping like a sea lion in a circus, making my hands sting. But the pain was worth it, knowing she and her coven of witches were leaving St Vincent’s. Today! For good! Forever! They’d already packed their bags and broomsticks and were on their way.

  “Hip-hip-hurray!” I shouted as I clapped and danced a jig. And some of the boys followed my lead, cheering on the good news, whilst most of the others wailed like hysterical children abandoned by their mothers.

  “Yah can stop all that,” snapped Sister Monica, giving me a clip around the ear. “Don’t be so disrespectful to the Holy Mother.”

  “But I’m not being disrespectful to the Holy Mother, Sister Monica. It’s great news, isn’t it?”

  She responded by giving me another stinging clout around the same ear. But I didn’t care, I was overjoyed. This was the most welcome news I could ever have dared to dream of. For nearly one whole year, I’d had to put up with these distant, frocked shadows, floating like ghosts in and out of our everyday lives. And I couldn’t wait to see the back of them.

  As for the Mother Superior, I could have sworn she was a man. In fact, all the boys had been taking bets on who would be the first to expose her dark secret. We’d stand at the bottom of the concrete steps leading up to the dormitories, peering upwards as she walked up or down them. Or we’d “accidentally” trip over ourselves in front of her or pretend to faint, just to get a quick peek up her flowing black habit. But besides seeing her long, hairy legs, whatever secrets she’d had hidden further up remained a secret between herself and the Devil.

  “This,” continued Sister Ignatius, “is Mr Lilly. Your new headmaster.” As she casually dropped her second bombshell, the Mother Superior gestured towards a short, plump man, one of a group of unfamiliar faces we’d seen earlier on. He was dressed in a three-piece tweed suit and had a chequered trilby with a few small, coloured feathers poking up from the ribbon trim sitting snugly on his large head. Standing with his hands clasped tightly behind his back and his chest puffed out, military style, the new headmaster peered at us dispassionately through the small, gold-rimmed spectacles resting on the end of his nose. Above his smug, thick lips sprouted a Hitler-style stubble of hair.

  “Mr Lilly originates from Austria and speaks fluent German,” said Sister Ignatius. “He is also a member of the Round Table and the Magic Circle.” No mention of the Nazi Party. “So, come now children! Let us show our appreciation for your new headmaster!” She clapped her huge hands together, as did the few of us who were not crying. The other nuns clapped extra loudly, attempting to make a good show above the hysterical sobbing. I didn’t understand the tears. As far as I was concerned, any change at St Vincent’s was a change for the better.

  With 48 delinquents from all walks of life and every corner of Great Britain forced to live together under the same roof, it was inevitable that rivalry, antagonism, hatred, sodomy and, on the odd occasion, outright war would play an integral part in our daily lives at St Vincent’s Approved School. We were, at worst, appallingly heartless and cruel to one another, and at best, just able to tolerate one another.

  By the time the nuns announced their departure, I had endured 11 months there. Every day was a trial as we battled for the higher ground, constantly jockeying for a better position
in the pecking order of acceptability amongst our own peers. By “higher ground” I don’t mean the moral high ground – we didn’t have any morals.

  Beyond the eyes and the ears of the grown-ups, another world existed in St Vincent’s. It was a world beyond the imagination of normal, right-minded, thinking people. It was a place where we competed amongst each other for almost anything, from the mundane to the ridiculous, from the highly dangerous to the insane. Who’s the best footballer, the best athlete, singer, altar boy, the biggest snitch? Who can smoke a roll-up made of toilet paper and dried leaves from the sycamore tree with the lowest number of coughs? Who can masturbate the most times in succession without going blind? Who can stand the longest up against the wall without moving, while a football is kicked at it? And the most insane game of all: who can stay unconscious the longest?

  To play this game, the challenger did 25 squats in quick succession. On the last squat, he exhaled all his breath as another boy came up behind him and gave him a bear hug – literally squeezing the remaining air and the living daylights out of him. Rendering the challenger unconscious.

  Jimmy McDermott, a small, skinny lad from Liverpool, broke the record and then spent a couple of days lying in a coma in Liverpool’s Royal Infirmary. After he was discharged, he was paraded in front of us at morning assembly, where he’d stood smiling proudly as we were made to say a prayer of thanksgiving for him having survived his ordeal whilst only suffering minor brain damage. Though to be honest, I didn’t see any change in his usual demeanour. The upshot of it all was a total ban on all illegal competitions between us, with Sister Ignatius threatening to punish any wrongdoer with the cane, plus a week’s loss of all privileges.

  As an incorrigibly inquisitive child, I was always begging the question, seeking out clarification just so I knew where I stood, which was often mistaken by my superiors as blatant insolence. After being told countless times by the nuns how grateful I should be for the privilege of being at St Vincent’s, I couldn’t help but ask whether the one-week’s loss of all privileges included not having to attend daily Mass.

  “Mass is a duty, not a privilege!’ Sister Ignatius had barked at me, before caning me on the bare backside for my insolence and giving me a one-week loss of all privileges – excluding Mass.

  Perhaps the hardest part of being at St Vincent’s was that I was alone, without my family for the first time in my life. I couldn’t care less where my drunken, feckless parents were, but the loss of my brothers and sisters, especially Martin, was an ache in my heart. There wasn’t a day went by when I didn’t think about them and wonder if I would ever see them again.

  The last time I had seen my siblings was two and a half years earlier, outside Nazareth House Children’s Home in north Manchester. With our Daddy in prison and Mammy constantly disappearing, it had only been a matter of time before Social Services caught up with the nine of us still living at home. They decided that we could no longer stay at the family home alone but needed to go into care. And so, in January 1964, we were driven in a van to Nazareth House, our new home for the foreseeable future. It was the last time I was to see my brothers and sisters all together. As much as I loved them, I couldn’t stay with them: incarceration in a children’s home was not for me. Martin and I didn’t even set foot inside Nazareth House. As soon as the police van pulled up outside, we’d legged it, running as fast as our legs would carry us, leaving our siblings to the mercies of the care system, determined we weren’t going to be taken into care. Or so we thought… Martin and I had a much better plan: we were going home, back to 24 Stamford Street, Hulme.

  Looking back, I think Martin and I must have walked hundreds of miles around Manchester during the three years we had lived in Stamford Street. We roamed the streets, criss-crossing Hulme, Longsight and Gorton, with no planned destination and just the one purpose in mind, which was to take advantage of any opportunity that should come our way. Those three years – surrounded by my family, feeling that I had the freedom of the streets – were the happiest days of my childhood.

  Hulme! What a place! With many parts of it still frozen in its Victorian time warp. Even now, when I picture it, I see gas-lit cobbled streets and row upon row of back-to-back bathless houses with smoke-spewing chimneys. I think of an endless maze of back alleys, which you could walk along for mile after mile, hardly having to show your face to a living soul. I see clotheslines stretched from one side of the street to the other, straining under the weight of bed sheets caught by the wind, like the sails of a tall ship going nowhere; the front door steps scrubbed clean and donkey-stoned in yellow; the rag ’n’ bone man with his horse and cart, in no hurry to end the day as he strolled up and down the cobbles with his familiar song. I hear the voices of children, out on the streets playing football, hopscotch, marbles, swinging off the lampposts, skipping over long pieces of rope, chorusing “The big ship sails on the ally ally oh! The ally ally oh!”

  And let’s not forget the pigeons, hundreds of them, which our older brother Shamie told us were flying rats with wings. It seems like only yesterday that Martin and I walked into Dale Street, where we came across a flock of pigeons pecking at full slices of mouldy bread. Always hungry, we snatched up a stale piece each and headed off down the street towards the Stretford Road, picking off the worst of the green mould as we went, before eating it. Mammy and Daddy never threw away any mouldy bread. Instead, Daddy would toast it over the flames of the coal fire for us.

  “All dat green stuff is good for yer health,” he’d tell us. “That little fella whatshisname, with the long, scruffy white hair all over the show and the long moustache drooping from under that big hooter of his? Einstein! That’s the fella. It was him who’d invented penicillin from this shite. And now they inject it inta yer veins every time yah go inta hospital for an operation. That’s why we’re all healthy as can be expected.”

  But if Hulme seemed frozen in a bygone era, it was also a place of new possibilities. Its colourful and diverse mix of cultures – Irish immigrants, Pakistani, Indian, Chinese – were living in a lost time, but they were also part of a landscape that was changing daily. As the slums tumbled, vast areas of wasteland, which we called crofts, appeared. Waiting for a new beginning.

  Even our familiar home at 24 Stamford Street seemed changed when Martin and I returned to it after making our escape from Nazareth House Children’s Home on that cold January day in 1964. We’d only been gone a few hours as we had tried – and failed – to evade the Social Services, but already we had felt the difference without our parents or our siblings for company and warmth. How deathly quiet and empty it seemed.

  I don’t know what we were hoping to find when we fled there, if anything at all. We just went home, because where else would we have gone? On our many journeys around Manchester I had always loved being in derelict buildings, because I’d felt such a deep peace inside those silent sanctuaries. But not this time. As Martin and I hid out in Stamford Street, our former home – once filled with cries of laughter and tears – felt abandoned, cold, and devoid of any feeling. We probably knew, deep down, that it was useless to hope Mammy, or anyone, would come back for us or that we could carry on as before. This would never be our family home again and our lives were set on a different course forever. After three cold, hungry days, we took one last look around the house before setting light to mammy’s bedspread and walking out into the street, shutting the front door behind us.

  Rovers’ Return

  Crossing over the Stretford Road, we made our way up along Welcome Street. It was here that we could see how the turmoil of the clearances had spread, like a disease. The long row of terraced houses that had stood to our right only weeks earlier were now gone forever, except in the memory of those who had once lived in them. Nearby, there were some houses only half demolished, with smouldering remnants of small fires scattered among them.

  Further along the street, we noticed a group of young children sm
ashing the windows of yet more empty houses. And it was strange, almost surreal, for us not to run over and join them as we would usually have done, playing our own part in the demolition process.

  “Martin! Tommy!” Our cousin, Paddy Ward, had spotted us and hurried over, wanting to know where we were off to.

  “Nowhere interestin’ to be goin’ in the first place,” said Martin.

  “Can I –”

  “No, yah can’t come with us,” Martin cut in.

  “Have yah seen any big puddles lately Paddy?” I asked, a wide grin spreading across my face as I thought back to the time he and Martin had the puddle competition to see who could make the biggest splash. Paddy, insisting he went first as he was slightly older than my brother, had disappeared under the pungent, sludgy surface of a pond that had once stood in the back garden of a house no longer there.

  Looking back at me with a blank expression, Paddy was about to say something and then suddenly ignored me out of hand, either not wanting to remember or because he’d completely forgotten about the incident. This wouldn’t have been all that surprising to us, considering his dad, our Uncle Bernard, had told us his son Paddy was half a Guinness short of a pint.

  “Is it a secret? Where yah goin’ I mean?”

  “We’re off ta the police station ta give ourselves up, that’s all Paddy.” I told him the truth, hoping he’d accept it and be off on his way.

  “Give yourselves up! Jaysus what have yah done? Is it serious?”

  “We can’t be tellin’ yah that Paddy,” said Martin. “Otherwise ye’ll be telling the whole of Hulme, if not Manchester.”

  “I wouldn’t even tell the divil himself, Martin, sure I wouldn’t an’ yah know that don’t yah? I mean, we’re family an’ all.”

  “But there’s nothin’ to tell, Paddy.”

  “Ah, ye’d say that so yah would Tommy. I can see the lies written inta them shifty eyes of yers.”