The Case of Comrade Norris

By S. Kadison

1983 and in the north west constituency of Brownedge the purge of Militant is under way.

But how did James Norris ex-schoolboy county cricketer, working class Grammar school boy educated alongside a future ambassador, Tory voter and football fan get caught up in the maelstrom?

Why was he blacklisted for years?

Who put his windows through?

Who said they’d have him knee-capped?

Who threatened him with an axe?

Who stripped his flat to the last dog hair?

In this fascinating novel S. Kadison traces Norris’s life from poverty in the backstreets of Monkton to vilification in the national press and in doing so asks pertinent questions about the nature of democracy and the unscrupulousness of power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244379117

Book preview

The Case of Comrade Norris

THE CASE OF COMRADE NORRIS

S. KADISON

People think I write fantasy, but I don’t….It’s a slice of life. But it’s perfectly believable. There’s nothing incredible about it.

Joe Orton

PENNILESS PRESS PUBLICATIONS

www.pennilesspress.co.uk/books

Published by

Penniless Press Publications 2014

© S. Kadison 2014

The author asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

ISBN 978-0-244-37911-7

1

James Norris came from the bottom but he didn’t know it, and that was the start of his troubles.

He lived at 8 Birch Street, one of those north-west, narrow, cobbled rows of claustrophobic houses without bathrooms or hot water, which might have been brought into existence as a malicious joke to punish their inhabitants for crimes they were never accused of or sins they could never be forgiven. The river ran nearby, gurgling between its mudbanks at low tide, surging with industrial energy as it came in, becoming, once it had escaped the town, calm and clean enough to offer a welcome to anglers in thigh-length waders who stood in the meander at The Bottoms in their hours of freedom from the factory or the office.  Often, as a boy, he would follow it into the park where he would stand on the old wooden tram bridge, watching the dirty brown water crash and foam against the pillars. In the opposite direction it ran out to the Irish Sea. No more than a mile from his door, up from the path by the river’s southern bank which often gave off an odour of silted decay, were the huge detached houses of St John’s Avenue which looked out, keeping a wary eye on the town, its terrace streets, it backs, it pubs. He was ten before he saw them. They were a strange sight: their front lawns occupied three times the space of his house and before each one was another lawn, beautifully tended stretching to the edge of the road. He stood and stared. What kind of people lived in such houses ? He had no idea but they belonged to a world so different from his own he couldn’t imagine it and it was at once attractive and terrifying: he would like to live in a nice big house, but he knew the people here wouldn’t accept him, he was an outsider, he belonged elsewhere.  Back in his familiar streets, among his own people, the other world was quickly forgotten. His young mind didn’t fret. He had his family, his friends, his school, his sport. He was a carefree little boy and he imagined he would spend his life in the streets he knew and work in a factory like his father.

Isaac Norris descended from a long line of independent Suffolk fishermen who for generations had sailed out from Walberswick, Southwold and Aldeburgh to make what living they could from the chastising North Sea, marked by the resilience of battle with lashing waves and the intemperate fists of vicious winds; used to the unyielding rain in their faces and the relentless sun on their necks, with no expectation of plenty and  dependent on their own endurance and hard-work. Isaac was out on the perilous boats as a skinny lad of six, in awe of the strength of the men, watching their concentration and their barely shifting moods as they went from rich to niggardly catches. Fishing was to be his life. He never imagined anything else. But the war disrupted his expectations.  Men were conscripted.  Boats were moored and deteriorated, upturned, peeling, drying out, absorbing rain, beginning to rot.  Some men didn’t return. Isaac’s father, unable to raise enough capital to restart his business, moved north to Lincolnshire to work as an agricultural labourer. It was there, at the age of twenty-one, under the endless sky, Isaac met small, sturdy, hard-working, dark and direct Daisy Clague who’d come from Lancashire as a land-girl and stayed when the war ended.  He was attracted to her diminutive height because he was so tall. Slim and broad, his hands were surprisingly dextrous and his arms tenacious as steel ; he had plenty of athletic ability and had played cricket since childhood, adding to his brutal batsman’s punishing of the ball the subtlety and cunning of spin bowling.  Daisy liked to watch him. He was a sight in his off-white flannels striding out to the crease. She was proud when he swung and sent the ball sailing into the blue for six. He was a clever, unassuming man denied an education by his father who believed schooling unnecessary for a fisherman’s toil. She was excited at the thought of them making a life together. They were both energetic workers. The war was over. There would be new opportunities. They were young. Life was turning out better then she’d expected.

Daisy never knew her father.  In the 1880s, her grandfather was working on the family farm in the Isle of Man. He and his brother kept it going while their father drank himself to sodden ruin. They didn’t know the debts he’d accumulated, a silent burden which built up like unwanted items dumped in a dark cellar which grow damp, begin to smell, attract vermin and are noticed only when the problem is so severe the exterminators have to be called in.   When the truth came to light and the farm had to be sold, they chose to try a new life and crossed the water to take jobs in the churning industry of Lancashire, transformed from an area of sleepy, pretty little towns into an agglomeration of mills, chimneys, docks, rows of pinch-penny houses thrown up for the hoards of workers sucked in from the land. Never having been to school, Jack Clague taught himself to read and write and earned a living on the railways. Serious and diligent with a rare ability to deny himself today in the interests of tomorrow, he rose to be an engineer. Daisy’s mother was the youngest of three. Her two elder brothers were like their father: gruff and intense, good-hearted but seldom able to display affection. When the illegitimate pregnancy was announced, her oldest brother shunned his sister and never spoke a further word to her. She tensed herself against the rejection, but it mortified her. She’d always admired George and felt safe in his shadow. He was one of those people who leave space for others without having to make an effort. He was a Labour man, always arguing against injustice. He took up with a passionate advocate of women’s rights and vigorously supported the cause himself; but to get pregnant outside marriage was beyond his tolerance. She was shocked to discover the limits of his mind; she’d always thought he could think through any problem and come to a compassionate conclusion. She resolved not to let him know how he’d hurt her, and that became the tenor of her life, that of  an outcast who would never let others glimpse the pain it caused her who would fend for herself and no more seek sympathy than a polar bear on a drifting ice-floe.  She took a job in the mill and by hard work over long hours and ascetic frugality, bought the little house in Birch Street.  Teased and bullied endlessly as an infant because she had no father, with that acute understanding of how to wound, the other children went straight for Daisy’s nerves and she had to develop a stoic demeanour and a fierce tongue. There were one or two occasions when she retaliated physically, grabbing a tormentor by the hair and pulling her off her feet, or kicking a lad in the shins with her clogs. Her reputation began to solidify: she was inward; you couldn’t get to her; she was tough as last week’s beef; she was fierce. They left her alone.

She was never particularly interested in boys and was surprised when Isaac showed an interest. She knew well enough there were always men who would try their luck . She’d had her share of sleazy propositions. It wasn’t lost on her either that her defects made men calculate; a pretty woman has her choice of men and an average, unscrupulous seducer knows he’s likely to be brusquely rebuffed; but a less attractive woman sets a vulgar man thinking. She was young and full of energy and youth makes everyone attractive, but nature had been unkind in depriving her of the sight in her left eye. Her mother’s brother Jim had the same defect. Her eye was clouded and cruelly attracted attention. She knew it diminished her appeal but she knew at the same time it made her vulnerable; opportunistic men might think her desperate; but she was canny and strong. She knew the difference between genuine interest and manipulation. Isaac was the first man who genuinely liked her.  Little by little she began to realize he saw straight into her mind and was attracted to how she was. It gave her a strange feeling. All her life she’d had to fend off disdain and rejection. She and her mother had been almost alone. She had some contact with her cousins, Jim’s children. There were three boys and a girl. They were all generous enough and didn’t tease or mock her and Felicity was friendly and kind; but apart from them and one or two friends, she felt the world was against her and her mother. Yet Isaac found something in her he liked. When they sat talking and he made her laugh with tales of his national service in India and Palestine or of schoolboy pranks and mischief, she looked into his eyes, trying to work out the mystery; but it remained a mystery. She began to appreciate it had to be accepted without understanding, just as the nastiness of bullies had to be lived with. You could drive yourself mad trying to work out why. She didn’t know what made a bully vicious but she knew how to defend herself. She didn’t know either what made Isaac tender but she knew how to respond.

She thought once she might ask him. She would put the question bluntly:

What is it you like about me ?

But when they were walking, the day’s work over and she looked up at his gentle face and heard his caressive laughter, she knew it would be insensitive. What she knew she knew. She had no idea how. Isaac was a good man who liked her for herself and she trusted him. She thought herself remarkably fortunate. He would put his arm round her and draw her to him and all the loneliness and hurt of her childhood years melted away.

They worked on the land and Isaac also in a sweltering foundry, poor, unskilled labour and badly paid. The huts provided by the framer, dormitories, a toilet and barely adequate kitchen hardly kept out the rain and wind; in hot weather they stifled. For washing, there was a cold tap. Isaac fretted about the future. He couldn’t go on doing work like this. It needed no intelligence. The farmer treated them like donkeys. He was a stupid, uncultured man who knew the needs of his farm and nothing else. One day when the sun was relentless, Isaac said:

Lawrence of Arabia couldn’t work in this.

Lawrence who ? he replied.

Isaac wanted work which would use his intelligence and skill; and he wanted to make good money. He would stand up in the middle of an endless field of potatoes and look at the flat expanse, a deadening, imagination-stilling plainness. He wished he could go back to the  unsteady sea to the boat he’d been promised but which his father had sold without telling him. If only he was in Suffolk and had a sturdy little vessel of his own, he could make enough to pay for a good house, ask Daisy to marry him. In these circumstances, the thought of marriage was impossible. It stirred a small anger in him which he tried to fight away because he was mistrustful of ugly rage and preferred to remain calm and positive, to try to find a way through difficulties without reacting like a provoked bull. If you used your brain, there was usually a solution and the best means to deal with people who set your nerves on edge was to smile, make some light-hearted quip and stay out of their way. All the same the little knot of anger was hard to dissolve. Why did he have to work for men less intelligent than himself ? Why did he have to labour so hard for so long in all conditions and earn so little ? Where did the farmer get his land ? Probably he inherited it. He would have inherited a boat had it not been for the war, he would have sailed out early every morning, his own master, submitted only to the unruly ways of the waves, would have employed his skill and strength to drag what living he could from the dark underworld where the fish were as comfortable as a baby in its cot, would have come into harbour in the evening, tired but in control of his own destiny, thoughts that made him restless and unhappy.

I need a better job than this, he said to Daisy.

So do I, she said.

Yes, you too. But you know what ? I’d like to earn enough to let you stay at home.

I don’t know that I want to stay at home.

If you want to work, you should work, maybe re-enrol as a nursery nurse, make use of your skill and training, but you’re too intelligent to do work like this.

It was the first time in her life anyone had called her intelligent. She liked a book in her hands as a child and tucked her white legs beneath her on the blue sofa making herself small beside her mother to read Hansel and Gretel or The Princess and The Pea, learnt well enough at school but had to leave at thirteen. At church, she took roles in dramatic productions and with her jaunty presence and strong voice was well applauded.   It had never occurred to her she might be intelligent though she knew Isaac was because he read the paper and remembered details, read intruiging books  and talked about engines, forces but also events in other parts of the world, the Middle East or Japan, or from the past, the sinking of the Titanic or Mosley and the Blackshirts, which were vague to her. That he thought her intelligent brought a new awareness alive in her.

There’s no other work round here.

You’re right. If only I could go back to Suffolk and get myself a boat.

We could go north.

Would you like that ?

There’s work in Lancashire. We could live at my mother’s for a while. She’d take us in.

Would she have room ?

It’s a little house, but we’d manage. It’d be better than this anyway.

I suppose so.

Isaac was excited but disturbed by the idea. He’d never been to the north and conceived it as a place of smoke, blackened buildings and crammed slums, the opposite of the Suffolk of his boyhood, a territory of big skies, wild winds, beaches and the ever-present intoxication of the sea. What would he be going to if he went north, the life of a downtrodden factory worker huddled into some insanitary back-to-back  who would he never taste the salt on his lips again ? Would he get up in the morning and go out into a street wrapped in smog ? Would he cough his way to work and forget the slap of the harsh wind off the sea against his cheek ?

There’s skilled work in the factories. Building planes or trains or buses. You can make a good living.

Skilled work is what I need, or any work to start with.

For weeks they came back to the same discussion. Daisy didn’t want to seem too eager or he might  think she was forcing his hand; but to go home, to be under her own roof, to walk the streets she’d known as a girl, to see faces she knew, to bump into girls she was at school with, and to be back in the town where everything was to hand, where the buses ran regularly into the centre and where you didn’t have to walk two miles for a pint of milk, was almost as attractive to her as staying with him. All the same, she had reservations: was it merely reculer pour mieux sauter ? And would it kill the possibility of Isaac returning to Suffolk? Finally they agreed she should write to her mother. She penned a brief note on a pad bought from the local post office. The reply came quickly: yes, she would be glad to have her home; the company would be welcome; but Isaac would have to understand it was her house. He was content; but a reservation nagged at him: it was their house. Her mother owned it, Daisy had grown up there; they were at home. It was their town, they knew the place, the people and their habits. He would be the outsider and needed something to give him status. He didn’t want to be merely the guest under his mother-in-law’s roof. The dark thought came to him that things could go wrong and she might throw his bags on the pavement. What was to guarantee she would like him ? If Daisy were faced with the choice between him and her mother, what would she choose ? He couldn’t believe she would reject him, but he knew a mother and daughter conjoined was a fearsome duo. No, he wouldn’t go. Not as things were. There had to be a change.

He proposed to her on Valentine’s Day.

They set the wedding for the first day of spring. She insisted on a Methodist church, so they went to Barn Hill in Stamford. There was nothing in the place to suggest such a thing as a factory. It belonged to the past. The wooden-framed and stone buildings made her think of the hazily remembered kings and queens of school History. Monkton was a town forced out of the earth by coal and steam. What it had been like before the mills, the back-to-backs, the chimneys, the herds of men going through the factory doors and seven-thirty in the morning ? Perhaps it had been a pretty and magical place like this. Why had Stamford been spared ? Why had mills and manufacturing not invaded here ? Why weren’t there rows and rows of poor terraced houses, why didn’t goods trains rattle and bang behind people’s houses ?  All she could remember was that Lancashire was good for the cotton industry because it was damp. Was that it ? Was it too dry here for mills ? Or was there no coal nearby ?

They stood together on the little bridge watching the timid river Welland, clear and chuckling beneath them. The water looked clean enough to drink. She thought of the Ryder, how it stormed down from the hills after heavy rain and crashed like a drunken bull through the park, gurgling and brown. It frightened her as a child; but this little trickle was cheerful enough to paddle in. She wondered how different her life might have been if she’d been born in a place like this where the people weren’t like those she knew at home, didn’t have the demeanour of folk who had to work hard for meagre livings. She noticed most of them were well-dressed and carried themselves with a hint of pride so that they walked the streets as if they owned them and it occurred to her they probably did. Perhaps she and Isaac should set up home here. What a lovely place to bring up a family; but she knew they’d never afford it and a queer resentment which she didn’t like and which somehow didn’t seem part of her began to gain heat in the pit of her stomach. The bitter and demeaning  truth was they would have to go back to Monkton and live with her mother or they would have no roof;  they would have to live in a squeezed house in a terraced street in a dirty, clanking town where the majority were poor and a few lived well. It didn’t seem like that here. Everyone appeared comfortable in Stamford. How could that be ? She had no inkling. Had it not been for the war and having to work as a land-girl, she would never have come to Lincolnshire. She wouldn’t have known such attractive little towns existed. She was confused and her confusion made her unhappy. At least in Monkton she knew where she was. Stay with what you know; it seemed good advice. Stamford was a holiday destination. They would be able to come back and visit, sleep in a boarding house, be extravagant for a day or two; but she wasn’t made for a place like this. Perhaps that was how it was: some were born to be hard-up, hard-pressed workers, and others to live gently in sweet enclaves like Stamford, a thought at once upsetting and reassuring.

The  small, stone church, was in one of the most pleasant parts of the lovely town. There were twenty guests, all Isaac’s family and a small reception.  She wore the dress she’d made herself, he  the de-mob, dark blue suit which was tight under the arms. They ate roast beef and Yorkshire pudding then caught the bus back to the farm where they slept in separate huts.

But they were married.

There would be no question now of mother and daughter combining to exclude him. He was a husband. They were man and wife and Daisy’s mother would have to accept it. He would be a model of thoughtfulness; it was her house; he would be careful not to offend her. But he had his status. She would have to accept that.

They took the trundling train from Lincoln. When Isaac walked up the tame slope of the station approach in Monkton, he was surprised: the place wasn’t as black and unpleasant as he’d anticipated. They passed the stone Town Hall, which he thought a fine building and descended Carter’s Hill with its hotels and one or two big, old houses with tall, wide windows, guarded by trees and shrubs. When they came to the flat, in the distance, beyond the river he saw the thick woods hiding St John’s Church, up on its petty hill. This didn’t