Closer than Blood: Friendship Helps You Survive
Previously published as My Mam Shirley.Behind the notorious Hudson men who dominated the Canterbury Estate for over 30 years were the girls, and my mam Shirley.The third instalment of this gritty series recounts the incredible stories of the unflinching women behind the legendary Hudson family.The Canterbury Estate in Bradford during the ’50s and ’60s was a tight-knit community reared on poverty, crime and violence, and at the top of the heap were the infamous Hudson family. But it wasn’t just the boys who had a story to tell: from matriarch Annie, who gave birth to 13 children, to daughters Margaret and Eunice, who married up and out, each had a personality as indomitable as the last.Then came Shirley Read, who was just 17 when she fell in love with Keith, one of the Hudson lads. To Shirley, the only child of affluent parents, the poverty of the unruly estate was as exciting as it was mysterious; newspapers for tablecloths, jam jars for cups, and, even by that time, no electricity. But it was a friendship forged with Annie and June, the younger Hudson sisters, that would teach Shirley not only to how to survive, Canterbury-style, but would also give her the strength to overcome an unexpected personal tragedy that would soon become a nightmare for women across the world…Eye-opening and warm, this is the vivid account of the ‘Tucker’ girls; the resourceful women at the helm of a notorious Bradford family who will never be forgotten.
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All names and identities have been changed in this memoir, to protect both the living and the children of those who have died. Some changes have been made to historical facts for the same reason.
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First published by HarperElement 2014 as My Mam Shirley This edition 2018
© Julie Shaw and Lynne Barrett-Lee 2014
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018 Cover photographs © plainpicture/Emma McIntyre (woman); plainpicture/bobsairport (moody street)
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Source ISBN: 9780007542284
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780007542291
Version: 2018-02-21
Contents
A wall full of faces smile down on me,
And my heart begins to swell,
Past fuses with present so seamlessly,
Oh the stories these pictures could tell.
Old black and white memories are dancing,
Side by side with the colour of youth,
Hidden heartache temporarily halted,
By smiles that are clouding the truth.
Such happy times, such sad times,
Each inextricably linked to the last,
With spaces left for the future,
Amid these echoes of my past.
My name is Julie Shaw, and my father, Keith, is the only surviving member of the 13 Hudson siblings, born to Annie and Reggie Hudson on the infamous Canterbury Estate in Bradford. We were and are a very close family, even though there were so many of us, and those of us who are left always will be.
I wanted to write these stories as a tribute to my parents and family. The stories are all based on the truth but, as I’m sure you’ll understand, I’ve had to disguise some identities and facts to protect the innocent. Those of you who still live on the Canterbury Estate will appreciate the folklore that we all grew up with: the stories of our predecessors, good and bad, and the names that can still strike fear or respect into our hearts – the stories of the Canterbury Warriors.
Listerhills, Bradford, 1946
Shirley glared at the man who was sitting across the table from her; sitting, moreover, in her mam’s chair. He was old and very tall and he was staring at her.
He leaned forward. ‘You’ll sit there all day, madam, if that’s what it takes,’ he said. ‘But you will eat those sprouts and that’s an end to it.’ Then he sat back in her mam’s chair and lit a cigarette. Shirley looked down at the disgusting green balls on her plate. No way was she eating them. Her mam wouldn’t have made her eat them. Her mam had gone to work – she worked on the trolley buses and had left hours and hours ago – and if Shirley had to sit there till she came home, then she would.
Shirley couldn’t quite believe her mam had gone and left her with this strange man in the first place. Normally when she went to work she’d leave her with her Granny Wiggins or her Auntie Edna, but then the man had turned up last night and they’d both sat Shirley down, with serious looks on their faces. ‘This is your dad,’ her mum had explained. ‘He’s come home from the war.’
Shirley didn’t remember much about the war, but she knew she had a daddy and that he’d been in it, far across the sea, somewhere hot. He was called Raymond and her mam said he was going to be in charge now, which apparently included cooking all the meals when her mum was out at work and forcing her to eat things she hated.
Well, trying to. ‘But I hate sprouts!’ she protested again, hoping that he might get fed up of listening to her and allow her to leave the table so she could go and do something else. She still had to make her favourite dolly some new clothes.
‘And I don’t care,’ he said, blowing smoke out of his mouth in a cloud that wafted across to her and made her nose wrinkle. ‘Good food is hard to come by,’ he added, ‘and sprouts are very good for you. So you’re not going to waste them. I’m your father and that’s that.’
