Some would call it an adventure.
Next door to us in Shortlees, Kilmarnock was a cottage-type dwelling in which lived an alcoholic, divorced man and his young son, who was barely eight years old. How his dad got custody baffles me. It must have been a really bad split. The father would go and see his drinking buddies leaving the boy alone for long periods, something we didn’t know at the time.
One Friday night in the summer I had been out with my brother Johnny and we were walking up the stairs to my parent’s flat. Johnny was barely sixteen at the time, we still lived at home. We both noticed the greasy smoke billowing from the gaps in the back door of the cottage.
You can say many things about us, but at the time we were young and fearless. Nowadays, in my sixties, I would think twice about plunging into the depths of what could be a tricky, blaze-ridden fire situation, but this was the seventies. Not only did we not have a house phone to dial ‘999,’ the nearest pay phone was about quarter a mile away.
My brother and I answered the call to adventure by jumping over the garden fence – something we had been doing for years. We ran up to the front door, it was locked but we could hear groaning noises from within and smell the smoke. We took a collective decision and booted in the door. Nowadays with triple locks and more solid builds this might not be possible, but this was 1977 and the doors on Council houses were flimsy constructs made of wood and little windows.
The pair of us moved quickly inside. Black smoke was pouring into the front room from the kitchen. A comatose figure was slumped in an armchair, face already turning grey, giving out loud, gasping, snoring sounds that told their own story. Rick had arrived home, put on some chips, and had promptly fallen into a drunken stupor. Johnny rushed over and shut the kitchen door thus cutting off some of the oxygen that was feeding the flickering flames. Also, it was a gas cooker. Not a good situation given that we might get an impressive bang as the house headed skywards.
Together we grabbed the occupant of the armchair, who was stinking of booze. He was not a big man, Johnny hooked him under the armpits and I grabbed his feet. He was a dead weight for his size as we managed to drag him to the front door.
By this time a few interested neighbours had arrived, drawn by the sound of a door being kicked in and the streaming smoke from the fire. One or two ran forward to assist my brother.
‘Upstairs Sanny,’ he said to me, jerking his chin upwards. Say no more. I headed up the stairs in double quick time and looked in the back bedroom where there was a somewhat decrepit single bed on which Joey, a small lad for his age, was lying, all curled up. He awoke with a minor scream when I unceremoniously grabbed hold of him. Luckily he was still dressed, probably to keep warm.
‘Fire,’ said I, ‘no time to explain.’ He fought me off for a moment with his little fists, obviously thinking I was some kind of monster, but by this time the smoke was sending exploratory tendrils up the stairs, and he went limp. I grabbed him bodily. He too seemed to weigh much more than he should in relation to his size and I thought I was going to be in the position of a nineteen year old with a hernia. Fifteen stairs seemed like fifty and I was in a position where one slip could have injured us both badly.
Outside in the blessed fresh air my lovely sister Charlotte was already at the wire fence dividing the properties, I swiftly put Joey into her arms and she disappeared with him into our parents flat. I was sensible enough to shut what was left of the front door, thus preventing oxygen entering the building any more than it needed to.
Rick was lying on the grass beside the unused driveway at the side of the house. His face was streaked with grime from the greasy smoke, and his narrow chest was barely rising and falling. For a second or two I had some uncharitable thoughts about this lout who had caused so much trouble with his neglect of chips and a child, and I was tempted to kick him in the short ribs. He deserved it.
In the meantime, after checking the fire victim was alive, Johnny ran to the payphone and called the works as regarding the rescue services – ambulance, police and most importantly in my eyes, the fire brigade.
Shortlees was a poor area in those days and this became a somewhat social affair with children and adults alike pouring out of their properties to witness the spectacle. Joey was taken from the arms of my sister – who’d already managed to feed him a sandwich and give him milk – by the paramedics, while Rick was carried off on a stretcher.
The fire brigade rushed into the building and fortunately brought the nylon curtain blaze under control in short order – this was the seventies. The front room also had a nylon carpet, and the old armchair therein was far from fire protected. I dread to think of what would have happened had the fire spread. Johnny had been wise to shut the kitchen door!
The pair of us had to make a statement to the police about what had happened. But Rick was never charged. We appeared the following week in the ‘Standard,’ the local paper as minor heroes, while he and his boy had to be housed elsewhere until the council replaced the kitchen.
It was certainly a lively adventure for us brothers Sanny and Johnny.