I was born into a little terrace house on a street in Belfast. It had 2 bedrooms, 1 living room, a kitchen, an outside toilet and a bath that hung on a nail in the yard wall. That yard wall was coated every year with distemper and the bottom of the walls treated with black tar paint. We had an old black and white mongrel that resided in that yard, he had been rescued from certain death, when my brother called into the dog pound in May Street in Belfast, claiming that he had lost his dog. He hadn’t. It was something that he would do on a regular basis. He would walk into town, call at the dog pound and say “Mister I’ve lost my dog” and when asked to describe it, he would always say “I’ll know it when I see it”. He would walk along surveying the cages that held the wayward, lost and abandoned dogs looking at only one thing, the date upon which the furry little beings time would run out. He would always pick the one whose expiry date was closest. In this case, it was the most unruly black and white mongrel dog that loathed men in working clothes and more especially if they wore a cap. He would bark in the most ferocious of ways, snarling and growling. No doubt this reaction was borne from very sad and without doubt horrendous past experiences. However he was now safe. We called him Rover and he lived within the confines of our yard walls, even though we had to live with the fact that he could be only ever be let out if on a lead, but he never missed to seize the opportunity to escape when both back and front doors were open. This was a regular occurrence on bin day, when we had to bring the metal bin through the house to leave at the kerb. Catching him was another story completely, and perhaps best left to another time.
It was a tiny house, but somehow my parents managed to raise 8 children there. By 1965, 3 of the children had married and moved into homes and lives of their own, leaving 5 children living at home with our parents.
It was the month of December, one sister had married the month before in November. My father worked for the Electricity Board and started at 8 o’clock but had to leave before 7 to arrive there on time. My Mother worked as a cleaner in the Gas Board, which required her to go clean the offices and showrooms before the staff arrived in the morning, so left our home before 6 in the morning and she returned at night when the staff went home. So both parents had left the home early in the morning to earn money for our upkeep, leaving early morning duties to only remaining older sister still living at home. She would ensure that my brother was up for work and that myself and my other 2 brothers, who were still attending school, were up in timely fashion, fed, dressed and left in time for school. She would rise first, put the kettle on for our hot tea, make toast under the grill whilst attempting to wash herself at the only sink the home possessed.
Our living room (like many others) was tiny, the coal house under the stairs had been removed allowing for our 2 seater settee to be pushed back under the descent of the stairs, giving more floor space. There was a chair under the window. We had a Christmas tree in the window, steadied into place with a heavy claw hammer laid across its base, then covered in Christmas paper. A black and white tv, in a heavy wooden case sat upon a shelf made over a housing of the gas meter. Our fireplace where our mirror was suspended on chains above. At this time of year the mirror that hung on the wall above the fireplace was adorned with holly and coming closer to Christmas, the children were allowed to write “Happy Christmas” on it with shoe whitening. Then there was the upholstered rocking chair, at the entry to our scullery, that couldn’t be rocked because there was not enough floor space to pull it out to allow for this. There were always more bums than seats in our home, and as a child I would often be relegated to the floor to sit, a place that I still favour to this very day.
At this time of the year, we had paper Christmas decorations strung on the ceiling, going from each of the corners of the room meeting at the glass light shade suspended on chains from the light rose in the centre. Each string of the paper decorations were pinned up in the middle as they made their way to the light. In between each of the streams of decorations hung from the ceiling we had Chinese paper lanterns pinned, that had been sent by an Aunt who was stationed in Singapore with her RAF serving husband. It was a colourful, glorious sight to a child. During the month of December, while the paper decorations hung from the ceiling, my Father could not fully walk upright in the living room for fear of pulling them down with his head.
It’s strange the things you remember. The night before, Sunday, was the night for Sunday Night at the Palladium and it was the last one before Christmas Day. A show not to be missed, all Christmassy themed with the Tiller Girls, Dickie Henderson as compere and all the top performing acts of the day. I always wanted to be a Tiller Girl when I grew up and leg kick in that line up with all the Tiller Girls and then stand on the turning plate holding onto the letters as it spinned at the end of the show.
Our day, just like all our other Sundays was spent attending the many Sunday Schools, but at this time of the year, we were singing the Christmas Carols that we loved, spreading the childlike goodwill. Our feelings of joy and excitement over the impending, much anticipated arrival of Santa in a few days time, among our friends, and indeed within our home, was almost palpable. Our excitement built through the experiencing the many arrivals of Santa at the end of all the Sunday School parties we attended and the pouring over of home shopping catalogues. We always headed to the most leafed through section of toys and games, making lists and wishes in our heads, for the many gifts that our parents could never afford, but Santa could. In reality, our Santa couldn’t afford them either, but no matter what we received on Christmas morning, we loved. Even my dolls pram and bike that were recycled and cleaned up every year were always a surprise for me.
So, as we retired to our beds that Sunday night, it was with our dreams of what the jolly Santa would be bringing us in a few days time.
My sister worked in the Accounts Department of a drink distribution company called Morton McClure Bottling, that were famous for their “Red Hand Stout”, and Christmas was a very busy time of the year. The drinks industry was a very busy industry in Northern Ireland all year round, but more especially at Christmas time. No computerised accounts back then, everything had to be manually recorded and everyone depended on the other to ensure that the correct account entries were made. So, with this is mind, she decided to rise earlier than usual, so that she could get to work earlier to get started on her heavy workload. This decision as it turns out was vital, because had she not, I would not be here today to share this with you all.
The next morning, Monday, as she descended the stairs which led into the living room, to her shock and horror, the rocking chair beside the fire and the entry to the scullery was on fire. She immediately run past the flames to the scullery and started to fill a bucket in the Belfast sink with water from the tap. As it was filling, she run to the bottom of the stairs, shouting and screaming for us all to get out of bed because the house was on fire. Being a Monday morning, typically as school children still do, we tried to languish in bed for 5 more minutes and were oblivious to her calls. As she was making her way back to the sink to get the bucket, which was still filling with water, someone from outside had spotted the fire, and threw a brick through our window to alert us. Whilst this action was no doubt done in the true spirit of helping us, it actually made the situation worse. The cold December winds whipped through the broken window and fanned the flames of the fire enabling it to spread faster where the untamed fiery flames spread across the entry to the scullery and to the settee placed under the stairs. My sister was now trapped in the kitchen, she could no longer yell to us all sleeping upstairs, as she could not get past the flames that barricaded her way to the living room. Myself and my 3 brothers were now trapped in our bedroom as the fire had spread to the stairs, and with no escape other than through the old wooden sash window in our bedroom.
My sister who was normally quietly spoken, was now stood in that yard screaming and squealing up to that bedroom window to us all to get out.
The first thing I remember of that morning was being physically lifted out of my bed by my oldest brother. I was bleary eyed, still half sleeping and totally unsure of what was happening around me. The room was beginning to fill with smoke. We could hear other people shouting now. People who had been on their way to work were shouting at the house telling us to get out, this in turn brought out our neighbours, who joined the swelling chorus shouting to us, to get out. The front of the house could not be accessed by anyone inside the house, so they could not be sure if we were awake. I have often pondered how helpless they must have felt, knowing a family that they knew, and with whom many of their own family members played with, were now trapped inside that building which was fast becoming an inferno. Their uncertainty, their panic, their fears.
Inside that back bedroom, my eldest brother took charge and made sure all of us were out of bed. We stood there as he told us we would have to jump from the bedroom window into the back yard below. No sooner were the words out of his mouth, when the brother next in age to me, had jumped through the window, glass, frame and all. We didn’t know what had happened to him, but removing the window was made more difficult now that it was broken. Three of us now stood in that bedroom and the smoke was getting blacker. My two brothers worked at that frame and were able to remove it and they were putting me out of the window next. I didn’t want to jump from that window.
Even to this day, I still remember absolutely those feelings of the most extreme fear ever. Although it was only a one storey jump, to a child, it felt like I had to jump off a multistorey building. It was a long way down for me. I was small. I was only 8 years old and the thought of it, filled me with absolute dread, fear and panic. I could not turn back, because the flames of the fire, were now licking the doorway to our bedroom inside the house, where the night before I had gone to sleep dreaming of Christmas in the safety of what had always been my home was now, no longer a place of safety. Sensing my hesitancy my eldest brother picked me up and threw me down to my sister and brother who were waiting open armed in the yard below. They caught me.
Now three of us stood in that yard with Rover our dog, waiting on our two remaining brothers who were left inside. The next brother jumped. He was 14 and had reached that gawky stage of growing. He jumped. As we stood there and watched. In his descent from the 1st floor bedroom, he caught his head in the washing lines in the back yard and was literally hanging there before our eyes. My sister and my other brother were trying to help him, as I pulled at his feet. The only brother remaining inside the fiery inferno could not jump from the window until we could free my brother from the washing lines. He remained inside the bedroom, waiting. Finally, he was freed from the washing lines and it was my eldest brother’s time to jump. Just as he was about to, there was an almighty explosion. The fire had hit the gas supply to the house and the impact of the explosion threw him on his back inside the house. We stood there waiting, initially, we had run back from the house to the rear yard wall when we heard the explosion, but returned to be under the bedroom window from which we had previously jumped, watching intermittent tongues of fire escape through the same window. It seemed like an eternity before he reappeared back at the window and somehow managed to pull himself in his dazed state through the window and jumped to join us below. It later transpired that his leg had been broken by the impact of the explosion and he had jumped to safety with a broken leg. With the result that he landed clumsily and had to be assisted to his feet. We five of us, stood there in that back yard where the walls encompassed us. Our house stood back to back with the houses in the next street and our only way out now was to climb the yard walls to the safety of our neighbours.
I was assisted over the yard wall to the left, and as I perched on that yard wall, I could see our neighbour waiting with open arms to lift me down and my sister followed me down. The girls climbed over the yard wall to the neighbour on the left whilst the boys went to the neighbour on the right. One still struggling with having almost hung himself and another with a broken leg along with other cuts and bruises. Physically, I was unscathed, mentally I was confused, I was frightened. I couldn’t recognise my life any more. Yes I knew the people, our friends and neighbours who filled our next door neighbour’s living room, every bit as tiny as ours and they were just so thankful we had escaped. Then there was the sound of machinery, clanging of a bell, men shouting, the fire brigade had arrived. The friends and neighbours were making soothing noises and rubbing my head and my arms as I waited for the hot sweet tea that everyone said would settle my nerves. I wanted my Mummy, but Mummy was at work.
Being December, it was cold and in eager anticipation and fearful that Santa could see, I couldn’t wait to get into bed and be fast asleep to ensure my name was on the “Nice” list so I couldn’t wait for my Mother to get my nightdress, and had climbed into bed wearing my winceyette petticoat reassuring my Mother that it was enough. It was a pretty pale pink petticoat, with little red roses all over it and a frill at the bottom. So as I stood there on that very cold December Monday morning, 5 days before Christmas, barefoot in a winceyette petticoat, a vest, a pair of knickers, and this was all I now possessed in the world in terms of physical items at the tender age of 8.
As I sat sipping the milky sweet tea, a realisation hit me, that despite the firemen being there, our house next door was still burning with the fire and I became fearful that it would invade the house of my neighbour that we now sought sanctuary. I started to panic, I cried, I shivered. I wanted to leave, I wanted my Mummy. In my childish mind, I wanted to be back in the safety of the home that I had gone to sleep in, the night before, but it was burning in flames that were billowing and causing the street that I played in everyday, to be filled with smoke. I wanted to flee, but I couldn’t leave without my Mummy. Where was my Mummy? Where was my Daddy?
As I sat in my neighbour’s home, the fear and panic started to build. They knew I needed to be as far away from the fire as possible to allow me to calm down, the fire was after all, still raging just next door to where I was now sitting, . It was suggested that I go to the elderly neighbour of my late Granny and Granda who lived just up the street on the opposite side. A lovely lady who was always kind to me and my family and we had become her proxy grandchildren, in absence of her own. So I was led, still barefoot to the door. The street was filled. The fire engines, the firemen, all busy fighting to control the fire. People who had been heading to work, now lined the street watching. Children who had been on their way to school stopped to watch the firemen as they battled the fire. They all stood there watching as the smoke engulfed them in the terraced housed street that was my home. There were rumours that, we, the children had died in the fire, so when I stepped outside into the street, there was a cheer. Just then, an ambulance arrived. Someone wrapped a heavy coat around me, scooped me up in their arms and carried me to the safety of my proxy paternal Granny’s home. She set me up on the settee and covered me in heavy coats to keep me warm, whilst she went into her kitchen and made me some more tea, She was sure a cup of tea with a biscuit would help me.
Within a half an hour, my Mother appeared. Her eyes were full of tears. She had to walk past what was her home, which the firemen were still working on and was still smouldering. The sight distressed her, but couldn’t dwell on that sight for too long, she needed to look for, and find her children. Because there were 5 of us and we were all sent off in different directions, it was not an easy task to put her mind at rest until she found us all. As she walked through the door she saw me sat on the settee, and my sister with her hands wrapped around a tea cup for warmth sitting on the chair by the fire. She sobbed and the tears fell. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were wet with the tears she cried, every so often, she gave out a silent sob. It strikes me now, that her silent sobs were masking the screams that must have lay deep inside her, but she suppressed them for fear of upsetting me, her youngest child.
While she had been working, her foreman had come to her and said there had been a phone call and she had to get home quickly. They could not tell her why she had to get home. She had to walk home, her imagination must have conjured up all and every reason for the urgency and those images and ideas must have increased the urgency to get home with every step she took. As she was walking, someone stopped her to tell her that her home had gone on fire and it was the Christmas tree lights that had caught fire, but everything was ok. She was still a long way from home.
It’s hard to imagine in this day and age how someone could receive such a call and then send their employee to walk home to face whatever it was that awaited them, but those were the times we lived in then.
Everyone rallied around us. Neighbours gathered to discuss what they could do. Everything we owned, was gone, we had nothing. An older cousin who had a girl older than me, gave me some of her daughter’s clothes. 52 years later, I still remember what she gave me. It was a handknitted emerald green cardigan that buttoned up to the neck and a red checked kilt. I had never owned a kilt before and I had always wanted one. Someone produced socks and a pair of black shoes that were too big, but I was no longer barefooted.
People came and went, discussions were carried on in the scullery of my proxy Granny, away from me. Hushed whispers, then every so often, I would hear my Mother sob again.
My uncle (my maternal Granny’s only son) had died earlier that year in June. My Granny lived in the same street as us, but had found coming to terms with the death of her only son so hard that she had moved to live with her daughter for a while. So it was agreed that we would live in Granny’s house for the time being. The local newspapers carried our house fire as headlines “Four jump to Safety” (which was probably the only accurate part of the story they reported on. It was reported on the news and a news crew interviewed my brother and I in the back yard of my Granny’s house. My Mother and Father were too upset to be interviewed. They zoomed in on our faces as we stood there in that back yard, wearing borrowed clothes. Rover was now reunited with us, but had to be locked into the outside toilet as the crew were all men and he growled incessantly from within his confines. I don’t know if it was nerves or not, but my brother and I tried to look all serious when they were asking us questions about what had happened. The cameraman got ever so close with is camera and the interviewer shoved the microphone to our mouths, it was all too surreal and we just looked at each other and laughed. We did not exactly make a gripping or pitiful news story, laughing whilst we were being interviewed, even though we stood there knowing, we had nothing and all that we had once owned been burnt to ashes that same day. My other two brothers had been taken to hospital. One was discharged the next day and the other two days after that. Cuts, bruises and a broken leg, but all in all, we were all very lucky, everyone of us survived. We celebrated Christmas in Granny’s house that year, not all of us fitted into Granny’s house, there weren’t enough beds. It was a different kind of Christmas and Santa still visited.
I never received counselling. No one ever asked me how I felt about that day. As a family, we never discussed it, because if we did our Mother became so upset, that we never ever mentioned it. Even 52 years after the fire, I still cannot fully come to terms with my feelings of what happened to me that day. My sense of loss of everything that was familiar to me. My childhood temporarily interrupted. Everything changed for me that day, but I suppose it was ingrained into me to be thankful that I was still alive and that was all there was to be said about it.
The firemen came to my Mother later on the day of the fire, the only thing that they rescued and carried out of the remains of the fire was the family Bible. It had been a collective family prize from a local Sunday School and it was the only thing that survived the fire, apart from us children. The pages had been smoke damaged, but otherwise not touched by the fire. Through the years those smoke marks disappeared, it is once again in the condition that it was always in, and it is still within the family to this day. There has to be a message in that somewhere.
Happy Christmas everyone, and may your God always bless you and protect you.
whatconcernsme 