Theo Mallier: Growing Pains

   The hippy movement bypassed North Shields in the 1960s. The culture of mining, fishing and shipbuilding meant that southern hippy stuff was just not going to wash. As with every rule, there are always exceptions, and George Mallier from Meadowell was just that. He always gave the air of respectability with his short hair, clean-shaven appearance, and crisp clothes when not at work - but it always hid his real hippy self. As he got older, the inside started to take over the outside, and his opinions and clothes went against the grain of his rough, beer-swilling, hard-talking, piss-taking workmates, family and friends.

   He became an embarrassment to the staid, hard-working community that surrounded him; his views on what was wrong with the world were scorned and ridiculed by people whose own world did not extend beyond the Tyne, Hexham and Berwick. Their lives did not stray any further than working and playing hard, oblivious of the coming, crushing failure of economy that would end with all jobs lost, and fish quays, pits and shipyards closed, leaving them having to get by from low-paid jobs in supermarkets and call centres.

   George had a suspicion this was going to happen. ‘How many ships are we going to need, and how much coal is left?’ was a question he often asked, answered by accusations of doom-mongering and pessimism. ‘Those people down south don’t care about us,’ he would say, but was hounded out with, ‘We don’t care about them, either.’

   He was born in 1950, when post-war rationing was still going, radioactive californium was discovered, the Korean War started, and Eric Blair died. Along with his generation and the many that followed, George was a teenage father, producing six children overall; some with his wife, Libby, and some not.

   Libby could not handle the pressure of teenage motherhood, or any motherhood beyond it. When ‘free love’ finally reached her in the 1970s, she was a willing exponent of its nature. From her six children, she could definitely pinpoint the father of four of them, and had a rough idea of the other two. On 17th August, 1979, one summer season after Margaret Thatcher had taken the country’s reins, the youngest child of all was introduced to the Mallier world of shit, snot and tears.

   He was named Theodore Clifford Mallier.

   The name Theodore, or at least Theo, came from Libby’s favourite 1970s TV detective; a lollipop-sucking fantasy figure that took her away from her world of nappies and loneliness. Clifford came from Clifford’s Fort in Tynemouth; a run-down 17th century battery built to defend Britain from invaders, and itself named after Baron Clifford, whose surname provided the ‘C’ in Britain’s first CABAL. It was where Libby and her friends used to hang out by the fort’s Low Light in their happier days, yet untouched by life’s shadow. Because of the name, whenever she thought about Theo now, she would be reminded of those days, and hope he would always have them.

   In a haze of the age old problem, alcohol, Libby disappeared one night never to be seen again, leaving her twelve-year-old son, Marc, to tend for the other five crying, abandoned youngsters. After three days, Marc had tried, but could feel the pressure that had caused his mother to leave, and in the end, turned to the person he had been told was his father, George Mallier.

   George had not taken a great part in the lives of his children, but in the spirit of his new-found humanity and a promise of extra government benefits, took them on board. He could not work due to his disability - laziness and lack of incentive - and was paid by the 1980s government, which he had always said had abandoned Tyneside, to look after these small people.

   Their lives were frugal, funded by the state, charities, and Provvy tickets. They were the street’s ‘tramps’, forever dirtied, proven by the lines of dried-up tear streaks that cataracted down their unsoaped faces. Resources were all around them and often used: wild rhubarb in the garden of whichever house they were currently living in was harvested for meals, an unforbidden vegetable taken with sugar; other people’s discarded chip shop newspapers could serve as toilet rolls, its sliding surface leaving their backs marked with two-day-old news covered in their shit, the smell hidden by the constant odour of salt and vinegar; they knew the whereabouts of every wedding that was taking place, so they could take part in the scramble of pennies thrown down to the street as the new brides and grooms were taken away from their shotgun weddings.

   George’s inherent disability meant that if the house was ever clean on the surface, it was the children that made it happen. As the children grew and had children of their own before the end of their teenage years, the house became so cramped that they could never find one big enough, not that it mattered as all he wanted to do was be away from it, choosing to spend his un-spare cash in the same way that Libby had. He never believed in drinking to get drunk, only to socialise, even on his own, and often reaching the point of multiplying eyes.

   As the years passed, and Theo grew, George started to see something in his boy. There was a connection between them that wasn’t there with any of the others, and though he always claimed that he treated all of his children and grandchildren equally, in his head, Theo was always his favourite, and he picked him to be the one he would have under the wing of his patched-up, alcohol-stained combat jacket.

   He was the apple, malus domestica, of his eye.