Don Hewson Wins Tombola

By Charles James

"Don Hewson Wins Tombola" is the first novel in the "Don Hewson" series of novels about an eccentric Yorkshire foster carer and the children he raises.

Wealthy widower Don Hewson comes from a tough background. He is landed with a child. A social worker asks him to foster a large family.

In this “feel good” novel we have violence, deaths, adult sex, a teenage pregnancy dilemma, a child in Intensive Care, adult pregnancies, more violence, births, a voice from the grave, a fairy godmother, more deaths, a wedding, and a honeymoon. We have love, good humour, and happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles James
• Release date: Dec 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370271979

Charles James

For about twenty years I ran an immigration and political asylum lawyer practice in Bradford West Yorkshire. Some clients travelled literally hundreds of miles to see me. My business cards were posted to Kurdistan, Georgia, and Pakistan by satisfied clients. I have been active in the Labour Party since I joined in 1972.. Politically my claim to fame is that in 1986 I increased the Labour vote 80% to take the third safest Tory seat on Bradford Council. I increased that vote 47% four years later to record the highest ever vote for any candidate in the ward. My immigration and political asylum experience comes over in the "Don Hewson" series of novels.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1: Don Hewson

The last time I lit up a cigarette I was shot four times and I killed some people.

I have never been back to Northern Ireland.

At the time I was a very young sergeant in the Pay Corps of the British Army. The Pay Corps were technically soldiers but even in Northern Ireland we did not normally carry weapons.

I was visiting a unit of the Westmoreland Regiment (the Westies) to audit their pay records.

The adjutant who ran the unit was a health fanatic who did not allow smoking in the Command Office.

After nearly two hours of auditing, I stepped out into the yard for a breath of air and to smoke a cigarette.

In Belfast in the 1970s the British Army wore protective clothing almost all the time.

The Westies' yard was enclosed and safe. I did not need to put on my flak jacket and my helmet just to smoke a cigarette.

I was stood in the yard thinking that my life in the Army Pay Corps was boring. What should I do?

I decided to smoke the cigarette.

I moved around a corner to where the health fanatic would not be able to see me.

I lit up.

The gates opened for an Army truck to come in. It was on a regular supply run, probably carrying food and toilet rolls.

While the gates were open a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) came in through the open gates. The grenade went straight through a window into the Command Office where I had been working. It was either a very lucky shot or a very good shot.

Immediately after the RPG exploded, snipers started shooting into the yard.

The angles saved me. The snipers could not see me.

I ran to the gateway avoiding the kill zone and I closed one of the gates. I looked out of a small window in the gate I had closed and I identified where the shooting was coming from.

I ran across the open part of the gateway to where I was safe again and then I closed the second gate.

There was total chaos behind me. Many of the officers had been in the Command Office when it was hit. Soldiers and sergeants were running to the Command Office to see to the wounded.

I was alive and unhurt.

I took a submachine gun and ammunition from a dead sentry.

I rushed out through the gates that I had just closed.

A submachine gun is not very accurate compared with a rifle. It was what I had.

Over the distances involved I knew I that had no chance of hitting an individual with an aimed shot. A spray of machine gun bullets through each window would have some effect. I would get some of them.

The snipers now had only one target visible. Me.

I remembered my basic training.

I kept moving because a moving target is harder to hit. We soldiers have a run called jinking or skittering where we keep changing direction. This kind of movement makes it even harder for a sniper to hit you.

I also had to keep moving and changing direction because of the angles to some of the windows that I intended to hit.

The enemy stopped shooting.

I stopped shooting because I had no target windows left.

I had hit all of the windows that I had wanted to hit. There was nothing left to shoot at.

While on my exciting run I had been hit by some rifle bullets.

I fell to the ground.

I lost consciousness.

When I woke up, I was back in the courtyard. The Westies had brought me in and patched me up. Or patched me up and brought me in. I do not know which.

We were waiting for ambulances.

I was dosed with morphine so I do not remember very much.

There was a line of us wounded men. Most of the others were hurt much worse than me. Some had lost limbs.

I remember seeing the health fanatic in the line of dead bodies. There was also a pile of body parts but it was covered.

The ambulances took a long time to arrive. Eventually I was put into the eighth and last ambulance.

I woke up in a military hospital.

The hospital would not let me smoke.

By the time I left Army hospitals I had kicked the habit. I have never smoked since.

In my teens and in my early twenties my relationship with my parents was difficult. I always found it so much easier just not to tell my parents anything.

While I was unconscious, the Army sent an officer to inform my parents that I had been wounded.

My parents did not know that I was in Northern Ireland nor that I had been promoted to sergeant.

My parents thought that I was still a Pay Corps lance-corporal in the relative safety of Catterick Barracks in the North of England.

I had not told my parents of my new posting and my promotion because they would only worry that I was posted to Northern Ireland. I was their only child.

So when the officer arrived there was a slightly confused conversation where my parents thought that the Army had made a mistake and that it was a different Donald Hewson who had been wounded.

When the officer gave my date of birth and he said that I was in the Pay Corps my parents were persuaded.

Then my parents were upset.

As soon as I was conscious, I telephoned my mother.

I assured her that I was alive. I told her that I would be transferred to a military hospital in England after a few weeks. My parents could visit me there.

I told my mother the line that I have used ever since,

I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A Pay Corps soldier rarely sees the enemy.

Even less often does a Pay Corps soldier have the opportunity to display gallantry in the face of the enemy.

Single-handed and without orders I had caused significant damage to a Provisional IRA active service unit. Out of eight men they had four killed, two wounded, and two cut by flying glass.

A Westie patrol recovered the RPG launcher and several rifles. The Army was pleased with them.

The Army was very pleased with me.

I was awarded the Military Medal, the second highest award for gallantry in the British Army. It was given to me at the first hospital by the General Commanding in Northern Ireland.

Normally if a soldier is awarded the Military Medal it is given some publicity in his local newspaper.

Given the number of Irish in Britain, such publicity would expose a soldier and his family to possible danger. There was no publicity.

I had shown intelligence, fighting spirit, initiative and courage.

The Army offered me the opportunity to attend Sandhurst Military College and to become an officer.

I thought about the offer very seriously. I had plenty of time to think about it because of my wounds.

I did not tell my parents about the Military Medal or about the offer of a commission.

My father would have opinions about what road I should go down.

I was going to make my own way in life. I don’t mean this rudely but I was not interested in what my parents thought that I should do with my life.

Looking back, I was a shit to my parents. They would have been so proud of my Military Medal.

I could at least have pretended to be interested in their advice. As a parent myself now I cringe at what I did to my parents.

I had been expelled from school before sitting any exams. A new supply teacher had patted my skinny fifteen year old bum and I had broken some of his thirty year old teeth.

I agree that was a disproportionate response.

I was a hard little oik. You mess with me and I punch you hard. That was how I lived.

You certainly did not pat my scrawny arse!

At the time I could not have spelled disproportionate to save my life.

There was no concept of children as victims in those days.

I was in one fistfight a month on average from the age of four until the age of fifteen. I was not a likeable young man.

The school was happy to have an excuse to expel me.

The Army had a manpower shortage. An uneducated fairly bright hard young man without any criminal convictions was accepted with open arms.

I intended to become a combat soldier with a Yorkshire regiment, or maybe even a Paratrooper.

I had a battery of tests during basic training.

I passed out as a soldier near the top of my platoon.

At the end of basic training, I was allocated to the Pay Corps because of my arithmetic skills.

I was not happy with that decision because I had intended to become a combat soldier.

Being young and stupid I mouthed off, expressing my displeasure.

My training sergeant had a kindly private word with me.

Listen, you little cretin.

Political correctness was not common in England at that time, and certainly not in the Army.

"You don't know how lucky you are!

"You are going to be paid almost the same money as a combat soldier but you will have nine to five hours, every weekend off, every night in a comfy bed, no marching in the rain and snow, no sentry duty, no heavy packs, and no bastard shooting at you.

"You are not going to be freezing cold, boiling hot, or scared shitless for your life.

"When you have done your twelve years you can walk into a job as a pay clerk in a factory and you can have a good life.

"You are made for life.

You are [rude word] lucky and you are too [a different rude word] stupid to realise it.

In those days it was quite normal for a sergeant to swear at a young squaddie. I had several times seen sergeants punch young squaddies.

The sergeant was simply giving me friendly guidance.

I shut up.

The Pay Corps had exams. If you passed your exams, you were paid better, and you had a much better chance of promotion.

I found the exams very easy. Within eighteen months I had passed every exam they had for me.

Maths and Accountancy and Taxation exams are wonderful exams where your answers are either right or wrong. I averaged 96%, close to the Pay Corps record.

I was promoted to lance-corporal as soon as I turned eighteen.

The office I was posted to as a lance-corporal was in Catterick Barracks. There were no corporals. I was under a sergeant.

The sergeant was under an officer who was based near Leeds and who never visited.

Sergeant Simkins was a nice guy. He was sick a lot, and in practice I ran the Catterick pay office.

There was a routine inspection.

Sergeant Simkins was off sick yet again.

The inspecting Major saw that this office was being run by only a lance-corporal.

I had been operating without any supervision for two months, including making all the returns at financial year end.

The Major grilled me for it seemed like an hour on the minutiae of the Pay As You Earn taxation system and Pay Corps procedures.

I answered everything perfectly.

The first time the Major smiled was when I answered.

"I don't know, sir.

That's not in the Manual, sir!

It was in the update to the Manual that arrived a few days later.

The second time the Major smiled was when I answered No, sir to the question,

Are you Irish?

Why the heck should being Irish or not being Irish be relevant to my job as an Army pay clerk?

I puzzled about that question for a while and then I forgot about it.

I had already learned that officers think differently to ordinary people.

Officers seem to be in a world of their own. Soldiers are doers and officers are planners and organisers.

That is the polite way to express our different roles.

Two weeks later I was called to London, to Pay Corps Headquarters. I had been there once before, for a training course.

It was the Major again.

Hewson. You are causing us problems.

I was surprised.

I thought that I had done pretty well, covering for Sergeant Simkins during his periods of illness.

"I am sorry, sir.

How am I causing problems?

The office you are running is a sergeant post. Sergeant Simkins is a good man, but he is sick. I am posting a sergeant to run the Catterick office.

Very good, sir.

Which leaves me the problem of what to do with you.

I said nothing. I had not thought about leaving my cushy job in Catterick. I was enjoying it too much.

Are you married?

No, sir.

Close?

No, sir.

Any children?

No, sir.

Do you have a sick mother, a hysterical girlfriend, or a neurotic pet to tie you to England?

This sounded good. At that time the British Army had bases in Germany, in Cyprus, and in Hong Kong. I would accept any of those postings happily.

No, sir.

What do you think about Northern Ireland?

This was not good.

The British Army had been in the Troubles of Northern Ireland since 1968. We did not enjoy them.

This was why the Major had asked Are you Irish? when he had visited. People who were Irish were not posted to Northern Ireland.

I gather it is a nice place to leave, sir.

The Major smiled grimly.

"Northern Ireland needs a Pay Corps sergeant, mainly to do pay audits and to answer queries.

"Every sergeant I have has more than twelve years’ service.

"Any of them could get a better paid job as a civilian pay clerk tomorrow.

"I have no sergeants willing to go to Northern Ireland, and there are none whom I can force to go there.

"Some of my corporals cannot be trusted to work alone.

My good corporals all have sick mothers, anxious pets, or suicidal wives. Two corporals said that they would buy themselves out rather than serve in Northern Ireland.

There was a silence.

I pondered his problem.

I could tell that Lance-Corporal Hewson was going to Northern Ireland.

There was nothing I could do about it. It was as inevitable as a train wreck in slow motion.

"The post is a sergeant post.

Would you like to serve two years in Northern Ireland as a sergeant?

This was a double promotion, from lance-corporal to corporal and from corporal to sergeant.

I would normally be over thirty before becoming a sergeant in the Pay Corps.

At twenty, thirty is half a lifetime away.

I was an ambitious young man with no ties. I had no choice about going to Northern Ireland, anyway.

I accepted the promotion.

In Northern Ireland I never left the barracks except to go in an Army vehicle to conduct a Unit pay audit.

The Major telephoned me once a week to make sure that I had no problems, but otherwise he left me alone.

I had a lot of time on my hands.

I had stopped drinking when I joined the Army.

When I turned eighteen and I was legally allowed to drink, I could not be bothered.

By then I was saving my pay so that I might one day have the deposit saved to buy a house. I smoked a few cigarettes each day, mainly out of boredom. Cigarettes were cheap in the Army.

In the Army the sergeants mess together. We look after each other.

I was the youngest sergeant in our barracks by a long way. The other sergeants were good to me.

My Londonderry barracks had a firing range. They call the city Derry now but it was Londonderry in my time there.

In basic training I had been taught to strip down a rifle. The Armoury sergeant was happy to teach me to strip down and to repair all the other weapons.

I couldn’t play with mortars and anti-tank weapons because of the cost of the ammunition, but I learned to strip them down and to repair and to reassemble them. I played with everything smaller.

I played for hours in the armoury and on the firing range each week, and it was all free.

The PT sergeant was happy that I actually wanted to use the gym. He planned an exercise programme for me that would gradually make me pretty fit.

A side effect of the stomach crunches and the press-ups was that I did not want much in my stomach.

I drank no alcohol and I ate only moderately. A lot of soldiers use chocolate bars but I stopped eating sweets.

I was so bored that I started studying correspondence courses.

I studied maths and science subjects because I had enjoyed those at school. I also studied for an external qualification in book-keeping because I was not sure how transferable my Army qualifications were.

I had more or less decided to leave the Army after serving my twelve years engagement. As the law stood at that time my twelve year engagement began on my eighteenth birthday. My years of service as a boy soldier did not count.

I had nine and a half years left to serve.

An Education Officer at the hospital gave me English classes. The clever man would give me a book to read, and a week later we would discuss the book.

The Education Officer would write a sentence, and then write it again changing the punctuation or the word order slightly. We would discuss the change in meaning that these very small changes made.

One of the first changes was Venetian blind and blind Venetian.

Another was I'm always pleased to see you're back again and I'm always pleased to see your back again. Two sentences that sound very similar but with very different meanings.

I don't remember the others now.

The Education Officer gave me a book on grammar and he had me read a chapter between each lesson. That is how I learned what an infinitive is.

I learned not to split infinitives.

Then I learned when it is appropriate to split an infinitive.

The Education Officer also gave me logic puzzles. I had never seen these before. I enjoyed logic puzzles.

A few weeks after the shooting, I was transferred to a military hospital in England.

The Education Officer at the new hospital was not inspiring. I had to do a lot more for myself.

Looking back, maybe that Education Officer was less useless than I had thought at the time.

The Pay Corps Major was still my line manager. He came to visit me in hospital once I was back in England.

Everyone in the Army is delighted that a Pay Corps Sergeant did what I did.

The Major told me that there is now a joke in the Army,

More mardy-arsed than a Pays Corps sergeant

It started as a comedian’s joke at an Army concert, and it has spread through the Army. Mardy-arsed means sore arsed.

In the Pay Corps a young sergeant with a Military Medal would be a very unusual beast. Technically speaking, the officers should not salute me.

The officers would be uncomfortable around me.

The Major told me that whatever happens I will not return to the Pay Corps.

I might be transferred to training young soldiers. Aged only twenty, with sergeant’s stripes and the Military Medal, I would be a role model for recruits.

When I was fifteen, I had thought that the combat infantry was the place to be. I had been cross that my arithmetic skills had taken me to the Pay Corps rather than to the Light Infantry.

Now I had seen how the combat soldiers operated.

I could follow the life of a combat soldier. I no longer wished to do it.

There were very long periods of boredom, long periods of tension, and perhaps minutes of actual combat in a year. And in some years, there was no combat at all, just training.

It is different now because the Army is so understaffed in relation to Britain’s needs, but I am talking about the situation as it was then.

I had grown up in my five years in the Army. It was time to build a future.

I had done well to be a sergeant at twenty. I would make Warrant Officer before thirty. I could enter Sandhurst now and become an officer.

Or I could leave the Army and become an accountant. This would involve three years at university. There would be lots of intelligent slightly younger young women.

I had met a number of graduate officers. They were intelligent, but they were no more intelligent than me.

The Army had been good for me. The Army had been good to me.

I had grown up from an uneducated uncouth boy soldier to a decorated sergeant with the opportunity of a career as an officer.

The Army would give me a good reference beyond the MM.

The best reference was that in less than five years I had gone from raw recruit to sergeant, a journey that normally takes at least ten years.

I decided to leave the Army now.

That was the decision that transformed my life.

I decided to read for a degree in Accountancy.

How could I read for a degree without qualifications?

Once I told the Army that I wished to read for a degree, strings were pulled.

I had an interview at Leeds University outside the normal interview cycle. The Accounts admissions tutor was a former Army officer who had been invalided out because of wounds. The tutor told me that with my practical experience and work ethic and obvious intelligence I would knock spots off most of his students.

I had passed the Pay Corps exams very highly.

Much to my surprise the admissions tutor told me that passing the Army exams at 96% was as good as good A levels for university admission purposes.

The admissions tutor expected me to earn a First or at worst a 2:1, so he had no problem admitting me.

At that time, I had no idea what a First or a 2:1 was. That is how ignorant I was!

It would help the admissions tutor if I passed the exams for which I was studying, but he was making an unconditional offer based upon what I had already achieved.

That put me on my honour to do well, and so I did.

In those days one was entitled to full student grant.

The student grant paid your education fees and it gave you easily enough money to live on if like me you did not drink or smoke.

Much of what I was taught on the degree I already knew, so I found the course pretty easy.

I earned a First Class Honours Degree.

I had time for work on the side, gaining additional experiences.

The part of the course that I enjoyed most was discounted cash flows and the different ways of calculating the return on capital employed. Mathematical calculation fired me.

In the second year one of my tutors suggested that after qualifying as an accountant I should consider becoming an actuary.

I did not know what an actuary was. I had to research it. It looked interesting.

While I was serving my time to qualify as an accountant I started the exams to become an actuary.

I also had to take some Accountancy exams but they gave me no trouble.

Once I was qualified as an accountant, I continued my actuary studies. I had to fund these studies myself but I had savings.

I began teaching an accounts evening class for extra income.

It was there that I met Sal Redfearn.

CHAPTER 2: Emma Brown

I have always been attractive. As a child I was particularly pretty.

As a teenager and as a young woman I was beautiful.

I had an inner confidence that just shone out of me.

At twenty-seven I am very attractive. I can attract men.

I just cannot find a man whom I wish to attract.

In my last year at teacher training college, I met and I fell for Craig Barker, who was a hunk. He was big and strong and attractive and reasonably intelligent.

We had a July wedding and then we moved into a little house that we had bought near my first teaching job. Both sets of parents helped with the deposit.

We bought in Tryton so I could walk to my new job at Tryton Junior and Infant School. I would not need a car.

Craig had a company vehicle for his work as a photocopier maintenance technician. Craig travelled widely for his work.

Craig also strayed.

It was only by luck that I discovered that Craig had been disloyal.

We had agreed to wait for two years before starting a family.

I was thinking that maybe I should come off contraception and start the family sooner.

An acquaintance forwarded to me a copy of a photo that some tart from Leeds had posted on the Internet. The man in the photo was definitely Craig. The activity needed no explanation.

When I showed Craig the photo his face was a confession in itself.

I chucked Craig out immediately, and later I divorced him.

I reverted to my maiden name of Brown.

There was no equity in the house other than the money that our parents had put in for the deposit.

I negotiated with Craig’s parents that Craig would sign the house over and I that I would repay the money that Craig’s parents had put in, by monthly instalments.

I took in a succession of lodgers to help to pay the mortgage.

I did not take foreign holidays in the summer because I wanted to clear off the debt to Craig’s parents as quickly as possible.

I am shaken in my judgement. Will I ever be able to trust a man again?

I am interested in forming a relationship with a good man, but where do you find a good man?

The scarcity of good men and my understandably untrusting approach means that there have been very few opportunities.

Over the six years since parting with Craig I have had a couple of fleeting encounters, which only go to confirm that most men are inadequate.

One was with hindsight just pathetic.

The other was an arrogant idiot with nothing to be arrogant about.

There must be decent men out there, but by age twenty-seven they are usually already in a relationship.

It looks as though