Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

Reading the SWALK letters, I have gotten more information about my parents — some we’ve observed growing up, and some I never imagined they’d say or do.This leaves me with different perspectives of who they were as my parents. To read the full version of the letters, check out SWALK (Interactive version).

An alcoholic father?

I sometimes wonder in retrospect whether or not my father was an alcoholic, but that our mother kept this out of our view. Perhaps she threatened him with hellfire if he dared show up at the house drunk, which could explain why he sometimes went AWOL. In other words, he had to sober up before he came home, or at least creep into the house when all the kids were asleep. 

The ‘Berserker’

As mentioned elsewhere, my “Berserker” father had Viking blood in his veins. Perhaps he was carrying on the Viking tradition of going ‘berserk’. On the few occasions when my mother ‘allowed’ him to drink during family events, such as New Year’s Eve and weddings, he would get paralytic drunk and go completely out of control.

One instance was the wedding party of my eldest brother, Sandy, and his wife Carol. I won’t go into too many details, but my father made a complete fool of himself. At one point I saw him drinking what I thought was half a pint of beer (in a beer glass), but when I smelt it I realised it was whisky! I hid it from him, but this didn’t stop him getting even more drunk. He even danced with all the young girls at the party. My mother did a ‘disappearing act’ realising she could no longer control the ‘madman’. 

We managed to get him in to his green Mk I Cortina. Alistair, my brother, was driving. My father, sitting in the front passenger seat, urged Alistair to drive faster. At one point during the journey, there was a car in front of us blocking our progress. I remember my father shouting raucously to Alistair, “Kiss his ass!” In other words, he wanted Alistair to crash into the bumper of the car in front of us!

In retrospect, one wonders if my father led a ‘double life’ – the ‘civilised’ father when at home and not drunk, and the ‘berserker’ when away from my mother and with his mates.   

New year’s Eve story

On the other hand, there were some positive elements related to his drunkenness. One New Year’s Eve at Billericay, Essex, my mother invited all the neighbours to a party. There were six newly built identical houses in Mountnessing Road, numbers  372 to 382. I don’t remember the names of all the neighbours, but there were the Halls, Grounds, and the Harts. The couple in 382 didn’t have any children, but they had a Jaguar, so they kept separate from the other five neighbours.

I can’t remember exactly who came to the New Year’s Eve party. I think it was just after we had moved from Culcheth to Billericay; that is, 1962/1963, when I was 13 years old. But to get to the point – my father got drunk, and started to tell all the neighbours about how he was descended from the Spanish aristocracy! Of course, this sounded like a tall story. As mentioned elsewhere, my father didn’t talk much to his children, or his wife for that matter, except to have an argument. 

Argumentative and cantankerous mother

In this context, I often used to visit my mother in the summertime in the early 2000s, when she lived in Merrow Park, Guildford, England. I used to take my son, Alan, with me, when he was about 5-12 years old. My mother looked forward to our visits. However, the initial ‘euphoria’ didn’t usually last very long. After three or four days I would usually have to ‘escape’ and take a trip to a Butlin’s’ holiday camp, such as Butlin’s in Minehead, Somerset, or some similar ‘escape’.

I’m not an easy person to get along with, but my mother certainly wasn’t either. So, you can imagine my father – having to live together with my mother for 30 years! No wonder he tried to plan ‘getaways’! Of course, it’s difficult to say who is the main ‘culprit’ here – my mother or my father? My cantankerous mother, or my hot-headed father? My mother would argue black was white, and then argue white was black. 

Inherited characteristics

My father was not so much ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, but like a jumping jack firework with a short fuse! In other words, he would ‘jump around’ in an erratic way, with sparks and crackles! Unfortunately, I, and some of my other brothers, seem to have inherited both of these negative characteristics of our parents – so we are twice as worse as them ha ha! ☺ Fortunately, as I get older my ‘firecracker’ behaviour has gone into reverse, but I’m still always ready for a good argument. Comically, my father mentions that their ‘dialectical’ relationship also keeps their relationship alive; of course, this is often dependent on certain thresholds not being crossed.  

Gavin writes about AWOL Harkness fathers

I mentioned all this to my brother Gavin, and he suggested it was the Harkness males that were the main ‘culprits’, regarding going AWOL. I will just present his argumentation where he talks about ‘absentee fathers’ in his email of 2 June 2023.

“Naturally Mumsie wished to be within nagging range of dad and spent most of her time playing catch-up with dad’s navy postings to various places. It is hard to say whether this suited dad or whether he was equally frustrated at not being on hand for his family. However, Chesser Loan was the one constant.

Our family has a history of absentee fathers. Sandy has worked 12 hour days his whole life, virtually guaranteeing that his children were either in bed or about to go to bed when he got home. Stuart moved 400 miles from his family to do a job he could have done in Glasgow for the same remuneration. Alistair worked thousands of miles from his family.

From my own recollection, I remember that in Culcheth, I’d see dad just before i went to bed and at weekends. It was the same in Billericay when we first got there with the added point that early on, he went to work on Saturday mornings but that ended pretty quick.

After that, I remember he came home about seven for about 3 years, then about six thereafter. He stopped working Saturday mornings and it became almost a ritual that on Saturday mornings, he would take me to the hardware shop and spend the rest of the weekend hitting something with a hammer. If i was stupid enough to hang about on a Saturday or Sunday, I would be roped in like everyone else to helping.”