Then there was Grandad Lock, who I think must have been 95 then. He didn’t say much – he was a horse messenger during the war, taking messages across enemy lines. At least, that’s what we were told. That’s how he got his leg blown off, and he had a wooden leg. We always used to laugh at him – he had smoked from the age of five to the day he died. He always had a fag in his mouth. Us kids used to wait for him to get to the end of his cigarette, which he smoked right down to the filter, and the end would fall on his wooden leg and burn a hole in his trousers – they ended up looking like a colander. He would stick his tongue out, take the filter and chew it and swallow it. No word of a lie, we all used to laugh at this!
NOW ON to Nanny Downer, or Irish Nanny. We didn’t know her very well, only during the last five years of her life. She left my grandad and lost all contact with her family. I don’t know all the reasons behind it, but even though Grandad Downer was wonderful with all us grandchildren, he was apparently very strict with Mum and her siblings, and could be quite heavy-handed with my nan so as soon as the youngest child, Uncle Glen, was old enough to fend for himself, Nanny Downer left to live a life of her own. She cut off contact with her family in case Grandad would find her and make her life a misery again.
But one day Mum got a phone call from the hospital to tell her that Nanny Downer was unwell. She had often spoken fondly of Nanny Downer, but us kids had never met her. When she got off the phone to the hospital, I could tell she was upset.
She said to Dad, ‘We’ve got to go, we’ve got to go.’ There was a sense of urgency in her voice and it bothered me to see her looking so vulnerable and frightened. To me she had always seemed invincible.
Dad said, ‘What is it, Pat? What’s the matter?’
Mum was starting to cry now. ‘It’s my Mum, it’s my Mum! She’s in the hospital and there’s something wrong with her blood. I don’t know, I couldn’t take it in. I can’t believe it, after all these years of trying to find her. Now I’ve found her and they say she might die.’
Dad was not the most articulate person and he always left the talking to Mum in most situations. He put his arms around her and hugged her tightly. ‘She’s not going to die, Pat, she’s not. It’s going to be alright.’
I looked at Dad and felt a great deal of love for him then, for protecting Mum. She was my world and he was looking after her.
At this point, Mum had had no contact with Nanny Downer for about 10 years. As you can imagine, it was a bittersweet moment. She was happy to be in touch with her mum after all these years, but worried about the circumstances under which they had regained contact. The doctors at the hospital told Mum that Nanny Downer had leukaemia and didn’t have long to live. Literally from one day to the next, having never known her, Nanny Downer was suddenly living with us at home.
Even though we only knew her for a short period, she had a great impact on our lives, especially mine. Although she was unwell she was always full of energy, telling wonderful jokes and always laughing and smiling. She had a husky Belfast accent and was a great storyteller. I don’t think all the stories she told us were true, but they were wonderful.
She had 22 brothers and sisters. Only 17 of them lived: I say ‘only’ – she used to tell us that they were so poor growing up, that she and her identical twin, Aggie (who died two years earlier of the same disease), used to knock on the doors of the rich in Belfast. They would pretend that Aggie was blind and that they were collecting money for blind charities, until one day they knocked on a door. The person who answered asked if they had a licence to collect money and, as Nanny Downer said, you’ve never seen a blind person run so fast. She said it was like someone had put a rocket up Aggie’s arse and lit it. When Frank Carson says, ‘It’s the way you tell ’em’, it certainly is. With her heavy accent and rolling laugh, it was definitely the way she told her stories that had us in fits of laughter.
There was another time when Mum and Dad went on holiday for a week and Nanny Downer was left in charge. I know what you’re thinking, it was irresponsible of my parents to leave a dying old lady in charge of three young kids, and maybe it was. But it was one of the best weeks of our lives and I still laugh about it now with my sisters. That was it – as soon as the door was shut and Mum and Dad were on their way, Nanny Downer (who was a recovering alcoholic, who never recovered), had me wheel her to the top of the road to Londis to get her Special Brew.
Being old and sweet-looking, in a wheelchair and with CCTV not being such a big thing then, filling up your wheelchair with Special Brew under your crocheted blanket and leaving the store without paying was quite an easy thing to do. What with me being a minor, and I don’t suppose anyone was prepared to check an old lady dying of leukaemia, it was a win–win situation.
We were set up for the week: Nan had her Special Brew and she agreed we didn’t have to go to school and wrote each of us a letter to take to our teachers. We had come down with a terrible bug – I think it was called shoplifting. She would have given Fagin a run for his money.
All of our friends came over to visit and we had what you might call an early rave. I had my first glass of cider and kissed a girl, and I haven’t touched either since. I had a puff of Nan’s JPS Special, the long ones with the extra bit of nicotine to kill you off, as she was always joking. Our time together was short, but it was a special bond that we developed with her and the jokes still have us laughing to this day. I often wish that she was still alive because I know that, now I am grown up, she would definitely have been one of my best friends as well as a special nan.
Nanny Downer could laugh even when the situation was beyond a joke. At this time Mum was working at a fashion store called Foxy Lady in Braintree town, yet another of her part-time jobs. It sold one-off designer outfits, but no designer you would have heard of. No Christian Dior here, maybe some Christine DeLor – you know the type I mean.
Mum thought it would be nice for Nanny Downer to sit in the garden for a couple of hours one sunny day while she popped off to do a shift at Foxy Lady. As it was a Saturday, I went with Mum to help her dress the shop. I say ‘dress the shop’, but I was dressing myself most of the time. It was the time of Dynasty – coat dresses and shoulder pads. I looked a treat!
We left Nanny Downer sitting in the garden in her wheelchair with a can of Special Brew that I had slipped under her blanket for her. I think Mum probably knew it was there, even though she didn’t approve, but Nanny Downer had given me the sign. She held up an imaginary can and knocked it back and forth in her hand. She used to hide the cans in her cupboard, which was more than just a cupboard but I’ll get to that later.
We wheeled her to a corner of the garden, where there was just the right amount of sunshine and shade, and she was modelling one of her synthetic blue flowery dresses, one of those that would melt if you lit a match anywhere near it. She also had one in pink and another in yellow, but that Saturday she was working the blue dress and a perky straw hat in her wheelchair.
As we left, Mum asked, ‘Are you alright, Mum? Do you need anything?’
‘I’m alright, Patsy, be off with you. Go to work.’
I think she couldn’t wait for us to leave so she could neck her Special Brew and she gave me a conspiratorial wink as I waved goodbye. As we turned out the back gate I heard the click and ‘psshhht’ as she opened her can of Brew.
What started off as a beautiful summer’s day when we left Nanny Downer in the garden quickly changed with a torrential storm while Mum and I were at Foxy Lady. But we thought nothing of it, she was sorting out stock and I was practising my window-dressing skills.
When we arrived home and walked into the garden after Mum’s shift, there was Nanny Downer in the same position we had left her. She did not have the strength or the ability to wheel herself around in her wheelchair and she looked like a drowned rat. She had been caught in the downpour and was soaked through. Her straw hat had collapsed around her face, while her synthetic dress collected rainwater in little puddles in her lap.
Mum gasped in horror.
‘Oh,