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An Oral History 1985-2015
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<blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 116266" data-attributes="member: 22"><p><span style="font-size: 18px"><u>1964</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Alfie Moon: I was born impressive, weren't I?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Alfie: Born with a spanner in me hand, weren't I? Obviously me mum found it a little bit painful.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Jean Slater: Alfie was born to be a father.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kat Moon (née Slater) on Alfie: Legend has it [he] was born in the back of a hackney where the fare was topping twenty guineas.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Michael Moon to Alfie, his cousin: Your nan used to keep you in the sink. I still remember that picture of you, fingers stuck up the tap.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"><span style="font-size: 18px">Cora Cross to her daughter Ava: Your dad meant a lot to me. It wasn’t just one night. He gave me [a silver bracelet]. I’ve always kept it close.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"><span style="font-size: 18px">Tanya Branning on Cora’s boyfriend: What was he like?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Cora Cross: He had charm coming out of every pore. He had the gift of the gab, that one. He was very special to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Tanya: So you were going steady?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Cora: We saw each other a bit, best part of a year. He was a sailor. Moved around. Girl in every port. He broke my heart.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Tanya: And you were carrying his baby.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Cora: He never even knew I was pregnant. He cleared off before I had a chance to tell him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Cora to Ava: He knew nothing about you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Charlie Cotton: We went to your Irene's wedding.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: Don't remind me. When you sang that filthy song, I was so ashamed. I wished the ground would open and swallow me - and then when you fell off the table and tipped the punch bowl into Mrs Collins' lap!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Charlie: That was your Fred. He kicked the chair.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Charlie, on the last time he and Dot were intimate: When was it, 1964?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Minty Peterson: 1964, the year West Ham first won the cup.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Jim Branning on 1964: It's the first year we won the FA Cup, that is.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Charlie Slater: Johnny Byrne - what a player.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Alfie: Happy days, eh?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Charlie: Not much! And Sissons, great player he was as well.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy Mitchell: When I was a kid, I wanted to live in a castle. I was about five, I was little. And I don't mean a block of flats either - I mean like a proper castle with a drawbridge and a moat. And I wanted to be a knight in shining armour or a handsome prince — or both. I used to spend hours drawing dragons, working out all me armour, making castles out of playing cards. Then me old man would roll in drunk, knock the whole lot over, start laying into my mum. And I used to think to meself, "You don't know what's coming to you. Because she is my mum and I don't care what you think, she's mine. And one day, I'm going to have my castle and a horse and a sword and a shield and I'm going to cut your stinking, rotten, stinking head off."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline Fowler: In my day, if there was someone you liked, you just met up and, well, it was that simple.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: I remember my Arthur when we started courting, just twenty-one he was. There was nothing of him. He was like a young Frank Sinatra, jet black hair and a smile that would make you go all goose-pimply.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur Fowler: I was thinner then, and good looking, even though I say it myself.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: I’ve always paid half, even when I went out with Arthur.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: Arthur and I couldn't afford to go out much. We used to go for long walks by the canal.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: You used to like going the pictures, didn't you?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: Oh, I did. Romantic idiot, me. We used to sit in the back row, remember? You used to put your arm around me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline on Arthur: When I first met him, he was the most terrible kisser. I had to show him how to do it properly. He was all slobbery.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: It's all lies. She's thinking of her and Bunny Mason.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline on Arthur: He was a clumsy devil, always tripping or falling over something and everything. Used to get all embarrassed. Just made me love him more.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: We used to have a little bike, you know. A little Beezer 2-stroke, me and [Pauline], when we were courting. We used to go everywhere on that bike, you know — Southend, Kew Gardens, Runnymede. A bottle of beer, some fruit from her dad's stall, we were as happy as sand boys. I loved that old bike — a sense of freedom, the open road. Economical, too.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: Arthur used to have a scooter, one of those ones that's trendy now. One day, we went off to Bournemouth. Might as well have been Acapulco we were that excited.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline, looking at old photographs: This place me and Arthur used to go when we were courting. It's lovely. I mean look at us, happy as Larry.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: You used to have your hair all slicked back with white gloop. Looked as though it had been painted on with varnish.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: So? That was the style then.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Michelle Fowler on Arthur: He was a greaser.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ethel Skinner: That's why your gran disapproved. He had a quiff.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: I remember meeting Lou for the first time. It was like Daniel going into the lion's den.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: He was so nervous, his teacup was rattling on the saucer.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Yeah well, Lou had that effect on most people. Pete used to say that she could put a fire out with that look of hers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot to Pauline: [Lou] didn't reckon much to Arthur, did she? Not at first. I remember her telling you loud and clear. She thought Arthur wasn’t good enough for you same as she thought Kathy wasn’t good enough for Pete.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline on Lou: She could be a suspicious old boot. I remember when Arthur and I were courting, he bought these new shoes and she wouldn't let him in the house with them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lisa Fowler (née Shaw): Why not?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: Well, because she thought they looked like spiv shoes. She used to call out, "Arthur, if you got them shoes on, you're not coming in this house."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lisa: And what did he do?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: He took his shoes off at the front door and walked about in his socks. She didn't want him to see that she was laughing, but I know deep down inside she was smiling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline, quoting her father: "I'm not having you going out with [Arthur]. No future, no prospects. And anyway, you're too young."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur to Michelle: [Pauline] was the apple of [Albert's] eye. I was never good enough for your mum. No, I was dirt under her feet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: You [Beales] have always looked down your nose at me, always.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline to Arthur: You've always resented my family.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: 1964, we got engaged. I remember [Arthur's] proposal. It was my sister that was getting married and I was ill. Jealous, I think.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline to Arthur: I was supposed to be bridesmaid, wasn’t I? But I woke up that morning with a temperature of a hundred and two. I had the flu. “You’re not going anywhere,” Mum said. I screamed and shouted, but her word was law, wasn’t it? So off they all went and left me lying in bed, looking at my lovely bridesmaid’s dress hanging off the picture rail. It was a beautiful blue satin. Such a shame to waste that dress. I thought, “I’ll just get up and try it on,” but I felt so dizzy, I thought I was going to faint so back to bed I went.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: Arthur came to see how I was. Mum give him a bag of fruit from the stall to bring up to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline to Arthur: I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes, you were sitting there by the bed. I thought you were an apparition. “Get out,” I says. “No, Pauline. I’m not going anywhere until you’ll say you’ll marry me.” Not the most romantic proposal, was it? But it was good enough for me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: I was sitting up in bed. I don't know how he managed to propose. He was sitting there stuttering and stammering, and I was sneezing away, and he asked me to marry him. Didn't even know him very well at the time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Michelle: Then why did you?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: It was his collar. It was sticking out of his lapel, you know, out of his jacket. And I looked at him and I thought, "You need someone to keep your collars in order, me lad." And after I thought that, I said yes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Michelle: So you just felt sorry for him?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: No. There was more to it than that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Michelle: Dad, how did you feel when you proposed to Mum?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: She was in bed with a runny nose at the time. I popped upstairs to visit her. She'd missed her sister's wedding. I only went round there to cheer her up. She was all tucked up, feeling very sorry for herself, and before I knew what I was saying, I asked her to marry me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Michelle: So you just felt sorry for her?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: No, there was more it than that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Mark Fowler on Arthur's proposal: Great romantic moment of the 20th Century?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: Yeah, it was to us. I don't know who was the more surprised. She had a fit of the giggles, looked at my worried face, stopped, blew her nose and then said, "Of course I will, Arthur." She didn't have to think about it. When you love someone, you don't. You just know.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur to Pauline: I remember how nervous I was when I asked your old dad [for your hand in marriage].</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: You didn't have two ha'pennies to rub together, did you, Arthur?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline to Arthur: I didn't know too much about you [before] that weekend we spent in Southend. I knew a lot more about you when we came back, though!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur: What a weekend that was, eh? Happy days, Pauline, happy days!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ian Beale on Pauline: I remember her telling me she went there [Southend] years ago with Arthur and they stayed at this hotel on the seafront, just the two of them, and he made a real big fuss of her. Treated her like royalty.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: She’d have liked that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: I always thought sex was overrated.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: Me and my Arthur, we was chaste till our wedding day.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline, looking at a photograph of Arthur: This was taken Whit Monday at Margate Beach '64. Got invaded by mods and rockers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Derek Harkinson on his best friend Brian: I haven't seen him since 1964, Catterick Camp.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Brian on himself and Derek: We were in the army together.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Derek on Brian: We used to call him Squeaky. We had such a good time back then. Everything was straightforward.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Frank Butcher: I did me national service. I suffered.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Frank: When I was in the army, I met a geezer just like Grant Mitchell. I give him a dig right on the end of the nose - wallop! He didn't mess around with me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick Trueman: Merchant Navy, me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick: Man, he was my best buddy, you know - Dickie Dawkins. Yeah man, it was me persuaded him to join the navy, you know. Told him we'd see the world and we did — the Far East, South America, Australia, Japan, Madagascar. Had a few adventures along the way — you know, a woman in every port. I was always careful though, not like some of me shipmates and them. I mean, they'd come back from shore leave, big grin on their faces, and you knew they'd been off into the backstreet with some woman of ill repute, as they say.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Jim: I catch your drift.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick: It was more than a drift they caught! Man, they'd be lying in their bunks wriggling like eels. In Madagascar, where we found the cure for our shipmates' distressing condition, an old man came up to us and told us about a powerful medicine that healed people when the world was young.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Jim: What, before the NHS?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick: He was talking about the power of Mother Nature.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">An extract from a letter written by Patrick in September 1964: <em>"My darling Audrey, I've a few days leave and I'm enjoying my stay here in Singapore. Good bars, fine beer, but that doesn't stop me missing you, my precious."</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick: When I wrote this letter, I was burning up with malaria. Couldn't leave the ship so I didn't setn foot in the blasted place [Singapore]. I just lay down there in my bunk, pouring sweat and dreaming strange dreams about giant lizards and women with brass chests.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Anthony Trueman, Patrick’s son: There's no mention of you being ill [in the letter].</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick: I couldn't worry a woman like Audrey.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Nobby Stuart: I was in the Merchant Navy for thirty years and I have loved women all over the world — every colour, every nationality you can think of — but they all had two things in common. Every one of them was a walking calendar — they've got photographic memories for everything you ever did, everything you ever said.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Alfie Moon: So what's the other thing then?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Nobby: They all made me very happy — some for half an hour, some for a week, some for a month, one for twenty-six years.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Alfie: Was that your wife then?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Nobby: My Mary, yeah. The sweetest creature that ever walked God's earth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Alfie: So what's the difference then, between twenty-six years or half an hour?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Nobby: I think I realised the difference the first time she fell asleep in my arms. I realised then there was nowhere else I wanted to be but there.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick: Yeah man, Dickie and me, we saw some wonderful places in we time, you know — until late one night, man I was so drunk, I fell overboard. Dickie, he dived in to save me, but the sea was so rough he got swept out and ... they never found his body. After Dickie died, I just fell apart. I never mentioned the Navy. I just couldn't bear to. I lost my best buddy and it was all my fault.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: Poorly — that's what they said about my mother just before she died.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot on Charlie: I found him stealing from me and cheating on me with other women. He’d got another little family up on Liverpool. He had two attempts at bigamy. The last one was me half-sister Rose.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: I knew my half-sister as Rose Elizabeth Taylor and then she erroneously became Rose Cotton, having bigamously married my husband, Charlie Cotton, while I was still his wife.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Rose Cotton: That wasn’t my fault. It was Charlie.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: Yes, but that was only because you were such a flibbertigibbet. I mean, you only had to ask me if I was alive.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Rose on Charlie: He told me you divorced him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: I never divorced him. He was a bigamist.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Rose: When I was young, the one thing we didn’t want second hand was a wedding dress.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: Unlike a husband.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Rose: I never got to wear white.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot on Rose: Married in cerise, according to all accounts. Well, what can you expect from a scarlet woman?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Cora Cross: The sixties, we always used to help each other out with the wedding dresses. I remember one — mint green chiffon, short, fake emeralds encrusted on the bodice. We listened to a lot of rock and roll back then.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: We've had some smashing weddings in the past, guests chipping in towards the drinks, and I can't remember one where the booze actually ran out.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Tom Clements: The number of women that have tried to get me up that aisle, but I've fought them tooth and nail, fought them to the bitter end.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Jim on making a best man's speech: I've done it before, you know - a couple of blue jokes, nothing racist.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Terry Raymond to Janine Butcher in 2000: When I was your age [sixteen], I was training to be an estate agent. And I was very good as it happens.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kathy Beale: When I was fourteen, I was in the school choir. Not for very long though and I'll tell you why. Remember they had that carol service at the Town Hall for all the local schools? Well, it's there that I met Timothy Wimple. He was a very respectable boy, respectable mummy and daddy, smart house, went to the grammar school. Very keen on folk music, you know what I mean? Short back and sides, neat parting - this was around the time of the Rolling Stones.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Never saw the attraction of the Rolling Stones. Always looked like they needed a good wash.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kathy on Timothy Wimple: Anyway, he asked me out and I'm so shocked I end up saying yeah. He took me to a folk club somewhere near Islington. He was such a nice bloke though. Very polite, very considerate. Always wanted to talk about me and I how I was feeling. Very respectful. All the things you dream of in a man. And do you know what?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: He bored you rigid.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kathy: I chucked him after a fortnight. I've often wondered over the years what would have happened if I'd stuck it out with Timothy Wimple. He wanted to be a pharmacist and I remember thinking, "What?" That was before Marcus Duffy got his hands on me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: He's the boy that raped you, isn't he?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kathy: Donna's dad. No more school choir for me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kathy: When I was fourteen, on me way home from school, I was raped. I don't mean interfered with, or saying no when they thought I meant yes, or any of the other things that happen to young girls. There wasn't nothing I could have done about it. He was in this car and he asked me if I know where Morley Street was. And I swear I never thought twice because he looked so ordinary. And he asked me to show him in the A To Z and I got in the car and we was looking it up and the next thing I knew, I was coming to on the back seat and we was miles from anywhere. I didn't do any of the things you think you'd do. I didn't scream, didn't cry. Something just took over and I went dead, like I did when my dad used to hit me mum. I thought that way, he wouldn't kill me. After, he said he was sorry, but he couldn't help himself, and that if I never told no one, he'd take me back to where he picked me up. And that's what happened. So you see, in a way, it's my fault because I let him. They never caught him or anything.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pete Beale: Did you go to the police?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kathy: How could I? I didn't fight back. They wouldn't have believed me. I never told no one till it was too late. You know what me dad was like, let alone me brothers. I couldn't even tell me mum. She'd have only got another hiding for not bringing me up right or something. I felt so dirty, like somehow it had to be my fault. Four months later, I realised I was pregnant. I went to Dr Legg and he got it all out of me. Didn't tell my mum and dad, I wouldn't let him. What good would that have been? He knew what they were like, all right. They wouldn't have believed it either. He did say something [to my dad] though. I never knew what. Must have scared the hell out of him though, because right through the rest of it, he never laid a finger on me again. He called me a slut and all of that, but he never hit me. I often wondered what it was he said.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kathy to Pat: When the school found out I was pregnant, I was called to the headmaster's study. You remember him, old Ackroyd. He had that glass eye so you could never be quite sure if he was looking at you or not. Anyway, he's quivering with rage because I've let the school down — no one's talking about rape then, you understand — and he turned round and said to me, "Katherine Hills, there are nice girls and there are not nice girls, and you are not nice."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Well, whoever wanted to be a nice girl?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kathy: Not me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Nor me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Irene Hills: I remember when I was [sixteen], I was more interested in boys than books.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Nana Moon on her grandson Alfie: I changed his nappies.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David Wicks on Pat: She was never around when I was a kid.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I made a few mistakes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David: No, you never made mistakes. You can only make mistakes when you're trying to do something. You never tried. You never gave a toss.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David on Pete: He was a decent enough bloke, wasn't he?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I suppose.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David: Then how come you was such a bitch to him?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I was young and stupid. Pete was a nice enough man, but I wanted more.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David: What about me?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: You were just a kid. I didn't think.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pete on himself and Pat: We wanted different things from life.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat to Pete: You were going to buy me a car, weren't you, Pete? We get married, then he'd buy me a house, a car, holidays abroad, fancy clothes. What did I end up with? Two boys to bring up and not a penny to me name.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kathy to Pete: I thought you was living with her [Pat] when she fell for Simon.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pete: She walked out, about the time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou Beale to Pete: You had a row, remember? You hit her.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pete on Pat: She was begging for it, asking for it. I'd come home from a hard day's collar and she'd be there with her glad rags on. I'd say to her, "Hello Pat, where you off to?" "Oh, I'm just round me friend's." And where'd she go? Straight up the Light Ale shop with the flavour of the month on her arm, laughing at me all the way. So I gave her what she wanted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou to Pete: She walked out. You come to me. You thought she was having an affair. I found out where she was. Well, I had more contacts than you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pete: Mum went and found her, fetched her back.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline to Pat: You hardly ever were the faithful wife, were you? It was never a secret.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou to Pat: You've been with half the men for miles around here.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pete to Pat: What about that redheaded Irishman, or Terry, the one who worked on the buses? Half my mates?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I've always played around. It started with Frank, Pete, Kenny ...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon, Pat's son: Dennis Watts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Brian Wicks. I was seeing everyone then. I was going through men like water. You see, I was let down badly. I was hurt, bitter. I wanted to get my revenge. Once you start, you can't stop. I didn't go the whole hog with all of them. Of course, they said I did - a dirty laugh down the boozer, good for their reputations. Reputations are different for men, aren't they?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pete on Pat: Pat always liked having something on you. That's why she slept around. She thought she could control you. She thought if she got someone in a corner, she could persuade them to like her.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou to Pat: You have been the thorn in the side of my flesh for years. You've torn my family apart. You deprived me of my son. I'm talking about Kenny, Pete's brother.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pete to Kathy: You were only a kid when [Kenny] was about.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ethel: Kenny Beale? I liked him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Angie Watts on Kenny: He was a nice looking fella. Mind you, bit thick. Runs in the family, don't it? No, I'm joking. He was a nice fella.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: Kenny was charm itself.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Den Watts on Kenny: He was a spotty nobody.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou to Kenny: Slippery little wotsit, you was. You weren't the sort of bloke to face up to your responsibilities.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Angie to Pat: [Kenny] always fancied you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Kenny? He wanted what his brother had got. Just like when they were kids.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou to Simon: [Kenny] made a big mistake. He should never have gotten mixed up with your mum. Not onlyfor his sake - for Pete's sake and for hers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I cared for Frank and he cared for me, and what do I go and do? I marry Pete who turns out to be a useless lover, a lousy husband and a cop out as a father. And to make matters worse, I had a sordid affair with his brother.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat to Lou: I can't pretend I didn't like the idea they were both your sons.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny on sleeping with Pat: Pete shouldn't have let me. He should have seen to it she didn't want to stray. That's what any man should do for his wife.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny to Pete: I wasn't the only one messing around with your missus. They were all at it. They were like flies round a jam pot. She loved it, loved all the attention.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I used to rebound a lot in them days.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: Sounds busy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: It was, it was. I can't hardly believe them days. Passion. God, the passion. Almost choking, couldn't hardly talk.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: You weren't the only one who, you know, fell in love.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Who else?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: Me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Who with?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: You. Hook, line and sinker.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I thought you was larking about!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat to Pete: Do you know the most thrilling thing about that affair [with Kenny]? Standing on a chair to kiss him. Vertigo was a good deal more exciting than anything else that was on offer. One minute I'd be with him, half an hour later I'd be in bed with you. Do you know what, Pete? One day, Kenny and I made love when you were asleep upstairs. In a way, I wanted you to come and find us, but you didn't.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I was with Kenny, me brother-in-law, and me husband Pete turned up with me mother-in-law, Lou Beale.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kim Fox: Were you starkers?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Except for a pair of pink furry ears. Well, bunny girls were all the rage then. Anyway, Kenny bundled me into the wardrobe. I was in there for nearly four hours. I have never had cramp like that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat to Kenny: You were no better than [Pete]. Wham bam, thank-you ma'am - not one thought about me, not one box of chocolates, bunch of flowers, a meal out. Just a quick "How d'you do? Let's do it."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: I swear it wasn't like that, Pat.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou: You'd have carried carrying on [with Pat] if I hadn't caught the pair of you upstairs red handed. Disgusting. And under me own roof and all.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: Thought you were on the stall.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou: That's where you should have been, not up there with her. Lucky for you it was me that caught you, not Pete.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: Why do you think we were here [in the house] and not there [on the stall]? It was learning about life. Not the best way, maybe.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou: Albert despaired of you. He knew.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Cora Cross: It would have been a crowbar across the shins for both of them [a couple caught cheating] in my day.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: Well, they wouldn’t have been that in <em>my</em> day, but then I suppose that’s because I went to church. As my vicar used to say, “To forgive is to live.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Just as well Lou got wind of us, otherwise you'd nhave gone on using me until you'd had enough.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: Not true.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou to Pat: I'm a woman. I know man's weakness. I know what it's like when they find a Jezebel come among them like you. I had to listen to my own son, who couldn't bear to face his own brother.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat to Simon: I got pregnant with you. That gave me some power. Eventually, I could play one off against the other. "Who's Simon's dad?" That put a stop to the dirty laughs at the boozer, I can tell you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon: Why?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Suited my purpose. It kept them all guessing, under the cosh.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou to Pat: We both know who fathered Simon — Kenny.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny to Lou: That Pat, she's shrewd. She never denied [that Kenny was the father] and you know why? She saw you setting a trap for yourself and she let you fall into it. She let you stew in your own poison.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James from London, post: 116266, member: 22"] [SIZE=5][u]1964[/u] Alfie Moon: I was born impressive, weren't I? Alfie: Born with a spanner in me hand, weren't I? Obviously me mum found it a little bit painful. Jean Slater: Alfie was born to be a father. Kat Moon (née Slater) on Alfie: Legend has it [he] was born in the back of a hackney where the fare was topping twenty guineas. Michael Moon to Alfie, his cousin: Your nan used to keep you in the sink. I still remember that picture of you, fingers stuck up the tap. [SIZE=5]Cora Cross to her daughter Ava: Your dad meant a lot to me. It wasn’t just one night. He gave me [a silver bracelet]. I’ve always kept it close.[/SIZE] [SIZE=5]Tanya Branning on Cora’s boyfriend: What was he like?[/SIZE] Cora Cross: He had charm coming out of every pore. He had the gift of the gab, that one. He was very special to me. Tanya: So you were going steady? Cora: We saw each other a bit, best part of a year. He was a sailor. Moved around. Girl in every port. He broke my heart. Tanya: And you were carrying his baby. Cora: He never even knew I was pregnant. He cleared off before I had a chance to tell him. Cora to Ava: He knew nothing about you. Charlie Cotton: We went to your Irene's wedding. Dot: Don't remind me. When you sang that filthy song, I was so ashamed. I wished the ground would open and swallow me - and then when you fell off the table and tipped the punch bowl into Mrs Collins' lap! Charlie: That was your Fred. He kicked the chair. Charlie, on the last time he and Dot were intimate: When was it, 1964? Minty Peterson: 1964, the year West Ham first won the cup. Jim Branning on 1964: It's the first year we won the FA Cup, that is. Charlie Slater: Johnny Byrne - what a player. Alfie: Happy days, eh? Charlie: Not much! And Sissons, great player he was as well. Billy Mitchell: When I was a kid, I wanted to live in a castle. I was about five, I was little. And I don't mean a block of flats either - I mean like a proper castle with a drawbridge and a moat. And I wanted to be a knight in shining armour or a handsome prince — or both. I used to spend hours drawing dragons, working out all me armour, making castles out of playing cards. Then me old man would roll in drunk, knock the whole lot over, start laying into my mum. And I used to think to meself, "You don't know what's coming to you. Because she is my mum and I don't care what you think, she's mine. And one day, I'm going to have my castle and a horse and a sword and a shield and I'm going to cut your stinking, rotten, stinking head off." Pauline Fowler: In my day, if there was someone you liked, you just met up and, well, it was that simple. Pauline: I remember my Arthur when we started courting, just twenty-one he was. There was nothing of him. He was like a young Frank Sinatra, jet black hair and a smile that would make you go all goose-pimply. Arthur Fowler: I was thinner then, and good looking, even though I say it myself. Pauline: I’ve always paid half, even when I went out with Arthur. Pauline: Arthur and I couldn't afford to go out much. We used to go for long walks by the canal. Arthur: You used to like going the pictures, didn't you? Pauline: Oh, I did. Romantic idiot, me. We used to sit in the back row, remember? You used to put your arm around me. Pauline on Arthur: When I first met him, he was the most terrible kisser. I had to show him how to do it properly. He was all slobbery. Arthur: It's all lies. She's thinking of her and Bunny Mason. Pauline on Arthur: He was a clumsy devil, always tripping or falling over something and everything. Used to get all embarrassed. Just made me love him more. Arthur: We used to have a little bike, you know. A little Beezer 2-stroke, me and [Pauline], when we were courting. We used to go everywhere on that bike, you know — Southend, Kew Gardens, Runnymede. A bottle of beer, some fruit from her dad's stall, we were as happy as sand boys. I loved that old bike — a sense of freedom, the open road. Economical, too. Pauline: Arthur used to have a scooter, one of those ones that's trendy now. One day, we went off to Bournemouth. Might as well have been Acapulco we were that excited. Pauline, looking at old photographs: This place me and Arthur used to go when we were courting. It's lovely. I mean look at us, happy as Larry. Pauline: You used to have your hair all slicked back with white gloop. Looked as though it had been painted on with varnish. Arthur: So? That was the style then. Michelle Fowler on Arthur: He was a greaser. Ethel Skinner: That's why your gran disapproved. He had a quiff. Arthur: I remember meeting Lou for the first time. It was like Daniel going into the lion's den. Pauline: He was so nervous, his teacup was rattling on the saucer. Pat: Yeah well, Lou had that effect on most people. Pete used to say that she could put a fire out with that look of hers. Dot to Pauline: [Lou] didn't reckon much to Arthur, did she? Not at first. I remember her telling you loud and clear. She thought Arthur wasn’t good enough for you same as she thought Kathy wasn’t good enough for Pete. Pauline on Lou: She could be a suspicious old boot. I remember when Arthur and I were courting, he bought these new shoes and she wouldn't let him in the house with them. Lisa Fowler (née Shaw): Why not? Pauline: Well, because she thought they looked like spiv shoes. She used to call out, "Arthur, if you got them shoes on, you're not coming in this house." Lisa: And what did he do? Pauline: He took his shoes off at the front door and walked about in his socks. She didn't want him to see that she was laughing, but I know deep down inside she was smiling. Pauline, quoting her father: "I'm not having you going out with [Arthur]. No future, no prospects. And anyway, you're too young." Arthur to Michelle: [Pauline] was the apple of [Albert's] eye. I was never good enough for your mum. No, I was dirt under her feet. Arthur: You [Beales] have always looked down your nose at me, always. Pauline to Arthur: You've always resented my family. Pauline: 1964, we got engaged. I remember [Arthur's] proposal. It was my sister that was getting married and I was ill. Jealous, I think. Pauline to Arthur: I was supposed to be bridesmaid, wasn’t I? But I woke up that morning with a temperature of a hundred and two. I had the flu. “You’re not going anywhere,” Mum said. I screamed and shouted, but her word was law, wasn’t it? So off they all went and left me lying in bed, looking at my lovely bridesmaid’s dress hanging off the picture rail. It was a beautiful blue satin. Such a shame to waste that dress. I thought, “I’ll just get up and try it on,” but I felt so dizzy, I thought I was going to faint so back to bed I went. Pauline: Arthur came to see how I was. Mum give him a bag of fruit from the stall to bring up to me. Pauline to Arthur: I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes, you were sitting there by the bed. I thought you were an apparition. “Get out,” I says. “No, Pauline. I’m not going anywhere until you’ll say you’ll marry me.” Not the most romantic proposal, was it? But it was good enough for me. Pauline: I was sitting up in bed. I don't know how he managed to propose. He was sitting there stuttering and stammering, and I was sneezing away, and he asked me to marry him. Didn't even know him very well at the time. Michelle: Then why did you? Pauline: It was his collar. It was sticking out of his lapel, you know, out of his jacket. And I looked at him and I thought, "You need someone to keep your collars in order, me lad." And after I thought that, I said yes. Michelle: So you just felt sorry for him? Pauline: No. There was more to it than that. Michelle: Dad, how did you feel when you proposed to Mum? Arthur: She was in bed with a runny nose at the time. I popped upstairs to visit her. She'd missed her sister's wedding. I only went round there to cheer her up. She was all tucked up, feeling very sorry for herself, and before I knew what I was saying, I asked her to marry me. Michelle: So you just felt sorry for her? Arthur: No, there was more it than that. Mark Fowler on Arthur's proposal: Great romantic moment of the 20th Century? Arthur: Yeah, it was to us. I don't know who was the more surprised. She had a fit of the giggles, looked at my worried face, stopped, blew her nose and then said, "Of course I will, Arthur." She didn't have to think about it. When you love someone, you don't. You just know. Arthur to Pauline: I remember how nervous I was when I asked your old dad [for your hand in marriage]. Pauline: You didn't have two ha'pennies to rub together, did you, Arthur? Pauline to Arthur: I didn't know too much about you [before] that weekend we spent in Southend. I knew a lot more about you when we came back, though! Arthur: What a weekend that was, eh? Happy days, Pauline, happy days! Ian Beale on Pauline: I remember her telling me she went there [Southend] years ago with Arthur and they stayed at this hotel on the seafront, just the two of them, and he made a real big fuss of her. Treated her like royalty. Dot: She’d have liked that. Pauline: I always thought sex was overrated. Pauline: Me and my Arthur, we was chaste till our wedding day. Pauline, looking at a photograph of Arthur: This was taken Whit Monday at Margate Beach '64. Got invaded by mods and rockers. Derek Harkinson on his best friend Brian: I haven't seen him since 1964, Catterick Camp. Brian on himself and Derek: We were in the army together. Derek on Brian: We used to call him Squeaky. We had such a good time back then. Everything was straightforward. Frank Butcher: I did me national service. I suffered. Frank: When I was in the army, I met a geezer just like Grant Mitchell. I give him a dig right on the end of the nose - wallop! He didn't mess around with me. Patrick Trueman: Merchant Navy, me. Patrick: Man, he was my best buddy, you know - Dickie Dawkins. Yeah man, it was me persuaded him to join the navy, you know. Told him we'd see the world and we did — the Far East, South America, Australia, Japan, Madagascar. Had a few adventures along the way — you know, a woman in every port. I was always careful though, not like some of me shipmates and them. I mean, they'd come back from shore leave, big grin on their faces, and you knew they'd been off into the backstreet with some woman of ill repute, as they say. Jim: I catch your drift. Patrick: It was more than a drift they caught! Man, they'd be lying in their bunks wriggling like eels. In Madagascar, where we found the cure for our shipmates' distressing condition, an old man came up to us and told us about a powerful medicine that healed people when the world was young. Jim: What, before the NHS? Patrick: He was talking about the power of Mother Nature. An extract from a letter written by Patrick in September 1964: [i]"My darling Audrey, I've a few days leave and I'm enjoying my stay here in Singapore. Good bars, fine beer, but that doesn't stop me missing you, my precious."[/i] Patrick: When I wrote this letter, I was burning up with malaria. Couldn't leave the ship so I didn't setn foot in the blasted place [Singapore]. I just lay down there in my bunk, pouring sweat and dreaming strange dreams about giant lizards and women with brass chests. Anthony Trueman, Patrick’s son: There's no mention of you being ill [in the letter]. Patrick: I couldn't worry a woman like Audrey. Nobby Stuart: I was in the Merchant Navy for thirty years and I have loved women all over the world — every colour, every nationality you can think of — but they all had two things in common. Every one of them was a walking calendar — they've got photographic memories for everything you ever did, everything you ever said. Alfie Moon: So what's the other thing then? Nobby: They all made me very happy — some for half an hour, some for a week, some for a month, one for twenty-six years. Alfie: Was that your wife then? Nobby: My Mary, yeah. The sweetest creature that ever walked God's earth. Alfie: So what's the difference then, between twenty-six years or half an hour? Nobby: I think I realised the difference the first time she fell asleep in my arms. I realised then there was nowhere else I wanted to be but there. Patrick: Yeah man, Dickie and me, we saw some wonderful places in we time, you know — until late one night, man I was so drunk, I fell overboard. Dickie, he dived in to save me, but the sea was so rough he got swept out and ... they never found his body. After Dickie died, I just fell apart. I never mentioned the Navy. I just couldn't bear to. I lost my best buddy and it was all my fault. Dot: Poorly — that's what they said about my mother just before she died. Dot on Charlie: I found him stealing from me and cheating on me with other women. He’d got another little family up on Liverpool. He had two attempts at bigamy. The last one was me half-sister Rose. Dot: I knew my half-sister as Rose Elizabeth Taylor and then she erroneously became Rose Cotton, having bigamously married my husband, Charlie Cotton, while I was still his wife. Rose Cotton: That wasn’t my fault. It was Charlie. Dot: Yes, but that was only because you were such a flibbertigibbet. I mean, you only had to ask me if I was alive. Rose on Charlie: He told me you divorced him. Dot: I never divorced him. He was a bigamist. Rose: When I was young, the one thing we didn’t want second hand was a wedding dress. Dot: Unlike a husband. Rose: I never got to wear white. Dot on Rose: Married in cerise, according to all accounts. Well, what can you expect from a scarlet woman? Cora Cross: The sixties, we always used to help each other out with the wedding dresses. I remember one — mint green chiffon, short, fake emeralds encrusted on the bodice. We listened to a lot of rock and roll back then. Pauline: We've had some smashing weddings in the past, guests chipping in towards the drinks, and I can't remember one where the booze actually ran out. Tom Clements: The number of women that have tried to get me up that aisle, but I've fought them tooth and nail, fought them to the bitter end. Jim on making a best man's speech: I've done it before, you know - a couple of blue jokes, nothing racist. Terry Raymond to Janine Butcher in 2000: When I was your age [sixteen], I was training to be an estate agent. And I was very good as it happens. Kathy Beale: When I was fourteen, I was in the school choir. Not for very long though and I'll tell you why. Remember they had that carol service at the Town Hall for all the local schools? Well, it's there that I met Timothy Wimple. He was a very respectable boy, respectable mummy and daddy, smart house, went to the grammar school. Very keen on folk music, you know what I mean? Short back and sides, neat parting - this was around the time of the Rolling Stones. Pat: Never saw the attraction of the Rolling Stones. Always looked like they needed a good wash. Kathy on Timothy Wimple: Anyway, he asked me out and I'm so shocked I end up saying yeah. He took me to a folk club somewhere near Islington. He was such a nice bloke though. Very polite, very considerate. Always wanted to talk about me and I how I was feeling. Very respectful. All the things you dream of in a man. And do you know what? Pat: He bored you rigid. Kathy: I chucked him after a fortnight. I've often wondered over the years what would have happened if I'd stuck it out with Timothy Wimple. He wanted to be a pharmacist and I remember thinking, "What?" That was before Marcus Duffy got his hands on me. Pat: He's the boy that raped you, isn't he? Kathy: Donna's dad. No more school choir for me. Kathy: When I was fourteen, on me way home from school, I was raped. I don't mean interfered with, or saying no when they thought I meant yes, or any of the other things that happen to young girls. There wasn't nothing I could have done about it. He was in this car and he asked me if I know where Morley Street was. And I swear I never thought twice because he looked so ordinary. And he asked me to show him in the A To Z and I got in the car and we was looking it up and the next thing I knew, I was coming to on the back seat and we was miles from anywhere. I didn't do any of the things you think you'd do. I didn't scream, didn't cry. Something just took over and I went dead, like I did when my dad used to hit me mum. I thought that way, he wouldn't kill me. After, he said he was sorry, but he couldn't help himself, and that if I never told no one, he'd take me back to where he picked me up. And that's what happened. So you see, in a way, it's my fault because I let him. They never caught him or anything. Pete Beale: Did you go to the police? Kathy: How could I? I didn't fight back. They wouldn't have believed me. I never told no one till it was too late. You know what me dad was like, let alone me brothers. I couldn't even tell me mum. She'd have only got another hiding for not bringing me up right or something. I felt so dirty, like somehow it had to be my fault. Four months later, I realised I was pregnant. I went to Dr Legg and he got it all out of me. Didn't tell my mum and dad, I wouldn't let him. What good would that have been? He knew what they were like, all right. They wouldn't have believed it either. He did say something [to my dad] though. I never knew what. Must have scared the hell out of him though, because right through the rest of it, he never laid a finger on me again. He called me a slut and all of that, but he never hit me. I often wondered what it was he said. Kathy to Pat: When the school found out I was pregnant, I was called to the headmaster's study. You remember him, old Ackroyd. He had that glass eye so you could never be quite sure if he was looking at you or not. Anyway, he's quivering with rage because I've let the school down — no one's talking about rape then, you understand — and he turned round and said to me, "Katherine Hills, there are nice girls and there are not nice girls, and you are not nice." Pat: Well, whoever wanted to be a nice girl? Kathy: Not me. Pat: Nor me. Irene Hills: I remember when I was [sixteen], I was more interested in boys than books. Nana Moon on her grandson Alfie: I changed his nappies. David Wicks on Pat: She was never around when I was a kid. Pat: I made a few mistakes. David: No, you never made mistakes. You can only make mistakes when you're trying to do something. You never tried. You never gave a toss. David on Pete: He was a decent enough bloke, wasn't he? Pat: I suppose. David: Then how come you was such a bitch to him? Pat: I was young and stupid. Pete was a nice enough man, but I wanted more. David: What about me? Pat: You were just a kid. I didn't think. Pete on himself and Pat: We wanted different things from life. Pat to Pete: You were going to buy me a car, weren't you, Pete? We get married, then he'd buy me a house, a car, holidays abroad, fancy clothes. What did I end up with? Two boys to bring up and not a penny to me name. Kathy to Pete: I thought you was living with her [Pat] when she fell for Simon. Pete: She walked out, about the time. Lou Beale to Pete: You had a row, remember? You hit her. Pete on Pat: She was begging for it, asking for it. I'd come home from a hard day's collar and she'd be there with her glad rags on. I'd say to her, "Hello Pat, where you off to?" "Oh, I'm just round me friend's." And where'd she go? Straight up the Light Ale shop with the flavour of the month on her arm, laughing at me all the way. So I gave her what she wanted. Lou to Pete: She walked out. You come to me. You thought she was having an affair. I found out where she was. Well, I had more contacts than you. Pete: Mum went and found her, fetched her back. Pauline to Pat: You hardly ever were the faithful wife, were you? It was never a secret. Lou to Pat: You've been with half the men for miles around here. Pete to Pat: What about that redheaded Irishman, or Terry, the one who worked on the buses? Half my mates? Pat: I've always played around. It started with Frank, Pete, Kenny ... Simon, Pat's son: Dennis Watts. Pat: Brian Wicks. I was seeing everyone then. I was going through men like water. You see, I was let down badly. I was hurt, bitter. I wanted to get my revenge. Once you start, you can't stop. I didn't go the whole hog with all of them. Of course, they said I did - a dirty laugh down the boozer, good for their reputations. Reputations are different for men, aren't they? Pete on Pat: Pat always liked having something on you. That's why she slept around. She thought she could control you. She thought if she got someone in a corner, she could persuade them to like her. Lou to Pat: You have been the thorn in the side of my flesh for years. You've torn my family apart. You deprived me of my son. I'm talking about Kenny, Pete's brother. Pete to Kathy: You were only a kid when [Kenny] was about. Ethel: Kenny Beale? I liked him. Angie Watts on Kenny: He was a nice looking fella. Mind you, bit thick. Runs in the family, don't it? No, I'm joking. He was a nice fella. Dot: Kenny was charm itself. Den Watts on Kenny: He was a spotty nobody. Lou to Kenny: Slippery little wotsit, you was. You weren't the sort of bloke to face up to your responsibilities. Angie to Pat: [Kenny] always fancied you. Pat: Kenny? He wanted what his brother had got. Just like when they were kids. Lou to Simon: [Kenny] made a big mistake. He should never have gotten mixed up with your mum. Not onlyfor his sake - for Pete's sake and for hers. Pat: I cared for Frank and he cared for me, and what do I go and do? I marry Pete who turns out to be a useless lover, a lousy husband and a cop out as a father. And to make matters worse, I had a sordid affair with his brother. Pat to Lou: I can't pretend I didn't like the idea they were both your sons. Kenny on sleeping with Pat: Pete shouldn't have let me. He should have seen to it she didn't want to stray. That's what any man should do for his wife. Kenny to Pete: I wasn't the only one messing around with your missus. They were all at it. They were like flies round a jam pot. She loved it, loved all the attention. Pat: I used to rebound a lot in them days. Kenny: Sounds busy. Pat: It was, it was. I can't hardly believe them days. Passion. God, the passion. Almost choking, couldn't hardly talk. Kenny: You weren't the only one who, you know, fell in love. Pat: Who else? Kenny: Me. Pat: Who with? Kenny: You. Hook, line and sinker. Pat: I thought you was larking about! Pat to Pete: Do you know the most thrilling thing about that affair [with Kenny]? Standing on a chair to kiss him. Vertigo was a good deal more exciting than anything else that was on offer. One minute I'd be with him, half an hour later I'd be in bed with you. Do you know what, Pete? One day, Kenny and I made love when you were asleep upstairs. In a way, I wanted you to come and find us, but you didn't. Pat: I was with Kenny, me brother-in-law, and me husband Pete turned up with me mother-in-law, Lou Beale. Kim Fox: Were you starkers? Pat: Except for a pair of pink furry ears. Well, bunny girls were all the rage then. Anyway, Kenny bundled me into the wardrobe. I was in there for nearly four hours. I have never had cramp like that. Pat to Kenny: You were no better than [Pete]. Wham bam, thank-you ma'am - not one thought about me, not one box of chocolates, bunch of flowers, a meal out. Just a quick "How d'you do? Let's do it." Kenny: I swear it wasn't like that, Pat. Lou: You'd have carried carrying on [with Pat] if I hadn't caught the pair of you upstairs red handed. Disgusting. And under me own roof and all. Kenny: Thought you were on the stall. Lou: That's where you should have been, not up there with her. Lucky for you it was me that caught you, not Pete. Kenny: Why do you think we were here [in the house] and not there [on the stall]? It was learning about life. Not the best way, maybe. Lou: Albert despaired of you. He knew. Cora Cross: It would have been a crowbar across the shins for both of them [a couple caught cheating] in my day. Dot: Well, they wouldn’t have been that in [i]my[/i] day, but then I suppose that’s because I went to church. As my vicar used to say, “To forgive is to live.” Pat: Just as well Lou got wind of us, otherwise you'd nhave gone on using me until you'd had enough. Kenny: Not true. Lou to Pat: I'm a woman. I know man's weakness. I know what it's like when they find a Jezebel come among them like you. I had to listen to my own son, who couldn't bear to face his own brother. Pat to Simon: I got pregnant with you. That gave me some power. Eventually, I could play one off against the other. "Who's Simon's dad?" That put a stop to the dirty laughs at the boozer, I can tell you. Simon: Why? Pat: Suited my purpose. It kept them all guessing, under the cosh. Lou to Pat: We both know who fathered Simon — Kenny. Kenny to Lou: That Pat, she's shrewd. She never denied [that Kenny was the father] and you know why? She saw you setting a trap for yourself and she let you fall into it. She let you stew in your own poison. [/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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An Oral History 1985-2015
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