Joan Laneghan (nee Clark)
Joan would have been 71 if she was still alive. She was born in 1948. She grew up in Walsall and was a fan of the Beatles, but also liked The Move, Wizard and ELO. She didn’t really get the hippies. They didn’t happen in Walsall. She was also not a big fan of Slade even though they were local. Rod Stewart and Elton John were more her thing.
After a couple of jobs in sewing factories she applied for a job as a wages clerk at a new company opening up on an industrial estate near here. She wanted to get this job because she was good at maths and it was different. She didn’t want to be just one of the factory girls.
She met Michael after she started the job. She liked him. He was young and ambitious, He was already a foreman and he was only 21. He would surely get on. Together the two of them could have a future together that would not be council houses and holidays in Paignton and Great Yarmouth. They married in 1969.
She wanted three, maybe four, children. She wasn’t sure. She also wanted a nice house. The sign you had made it was if you could get one of them semi-detached houses that backed on to the big park. That was her dream. The working-class dream.
Joan was working class. She was Crossroads and Coronation Street. She was never EastEnders. She was Dallas, not Dynasty. For Joan, John Thaw was Inspector Morse, he was never that bloke off the Sweeney.
Joan’s mother had also been aspirational. Her ambition was end of terrace house, talking over fences but having a back garden you didn’t have to cross an alleyway to reach. For both Joan and her mother the stars were out of reach, but the trees offered fruit if you had someone to help you climb them.
Joan achieved her mother’s dream with the end of terrace house. A big achievement and the first step on a ladder she never got to climb. Life intervened. Michael’s mother moved in. Thankfully she only stayed for a while, but although she was glad she moved out, she also thought that Michael shouldn’t object to her being happy and getting married again, but she never told him. She didn’t want to rock the boat, and now they had the house to themselves they could start to plan and have children and get the bigger house.
Michael said the time wasn’t right, ‘some of the factories are in trouble, we can’t get caught with a bigger mortgage we wouldn’t afford.’
Joan’s parents had been a bit unsure about Michael. They didn’t know that it was a good idea for their daughter to marry an Irish man, even though Joan told them you would never really guess he was Irish unless you met his mother, or his three older brothers, who all seemed to have inherited their parents fondness for Ireland even though they hardly ever went there when they were kids.
Around her parents friends and community, the news that she had married an Irish man was also a bit of a shock. ‘Aren’t they terrorists’ some had said, while others just said ‘no, they just drink and rob people.’ All of this meant that when Joan found out she was pregnant on the day of the IRA pub bombings, she knew that her parents might not take the news in the way they would otherwise have done.
They were worried for her and they were worried about what people would say to her. By people, they meant the people near to them who knew Michael had an Irish background. By her they also meant themselves.
They were right to worry. And not just about their neighbours. Some of Joan’s own neighbours who had met his mother were a bit colder with her after that day in 1974 and when she told them she was pregnant, there were perhaps not as many gifts and cards as there could have been, and the ones she did get weren’t as nice as they might have been.
And when the pregnancy really started to show, she decided not to go round to her parents house, she told them they had to come to her. They thought this was sensible. One of their neighbours had lost someone in the bombing and a woman walking round pregnant with an Irish man’s baby wasn’t a good idea.
She gave birth to Chris on 12 July 1975 the midway point in the trial of the Birmingham 6. Again, the amount of cards and flowers and good will messages were lower than they seemed to be for other people in her ward at The Manor Hospital.
No longer feeling as welcomed and settled in her end of terrace home, she was keen again to move. Michael was still worried about the risks of a bigger mortgage and needing to make sure they had enough money to raise Chris seemed to become another reason not to move, as well as a reason not to have another child just yet.
She began to give up hope of moving or of having any more children. She began to give up hope on Michael.
He wasn’t much of a father to Chris with the hours he worked. Parenting was her role and she loved her son so it was easy to do. He was the thing that kept her sane. That and her work, when she got another job after Chris started school.
It wasn’t the same firm she worked in before she got pregnant. It was a bigger firm in Wolverhampton that one of the solicitors had gone to. It was a good job and they were nice people that she worked with. But Joan felt she was not as well off as the others who worked there. They had bigger houses and bigger families. She worried about inviting them round to hers. She worried about their husbands meeting Michael, particularly after the factory he worked at closed in 1982. He was bitter, more hard-done-by, the ambition he had when they met and for the first few years they were together seemed to have been finally kicked out of him, particularly when his old boss hadn’t offered him a job at the new company he went to.
She wasn’t sure if she still loved Michael. If she’d stopped to think, she’d have realised that love had turned to tolerance, and tolerance had turned to habit and routine, offset by the twin distractions of work and motherhood.
Chris’s academic success pleased her. She hoped he would be a teacher. It was such a shame when he decided he didn’t want to be one. She really didn’t know why but did wonder whether it had something to do with his favourite teacher getting suspended for being gay. If he was gay. Someone at work, a young gay solicitor, explained clause 28 to her and she understood more about what it meant. Maybe he wasn’t gay, but it still didn’t explain why Chris didn’t want to be a teacher anymore and he didn’t want to tell her.
In a way she was glad, because it meant he stayed at home and got a job in a library. She was pleased he had friends although she wondered why they kept going up to Manchester and worried that Chris might move there. She was both happy and sad when he left home to do his degree there. She hoped he would come back home at the end of it. He went to London. She secretly hoped he wouldn’t like London and would return to the Midlands. He seemed relatively happy there.
At least he came back some of the weekends. Like the weekend before his birthday in July 1999 when he told her about what he had been doing. She knew what his dad was like and she knew it wasn’t a good idea to tell him. Unfortunately Chris didn’t.
After the row with his dad, she couldn’t ring him, she didn’t have a mobile and Michael always checked the phone bills to make sure they weren’t being overcharged. He also always answered the phone went it rang. She decided to call Chris from a call box. They established contact again and Chris used to travel up to meet her in Birmingham every couple of weeks. It had to be midweek so Michael didn’t know, and it wasn’t always easy, but it was always nice. A highlight of her week.
She started to think maybe she should just tell Michael. But it would cause a row, or a protracted silence, and she didn’t like either of those things. She could keep it as a secret that she shared with her sister. Her sister asked her why she didn’t just leave Michael. She didn’t have to live with him anymore, their son had left home and, if she was being honest, Michael hadn’t been the man she’d married for years.
Joan wasn’t sure. She could see what her sister was saying, but where could she go. Her sister told her she could live with her for a while till she got herself sorted. She said no, said that she couldn’t do that forever, didn’t have the money for a place of her own and didn’t know if she had the energy to start again.
But it was tempting, and each time she saw Chris the feeling grew that maybe she should do it. She had pretty much decided to make the leap when, in June 2001, she learned that she had cancer.
She told Michael. He was superb. He said all the right words, told her they’d beat this, there was no way cancer would take her from him. It was as much to reassure himself as it was to reassure her. His dad had died young, he didn’t want to lose another person he loved at an early age.
She didn’t tell Chris. She hoped a planned course of chemotherapy would be effective and he’d never have to know. She put off starting the course until after his birthday so that he wouldn’t see the hair loss when they met.
From August to December, she didn’t call him and as it was always her ringing him, he had no way of getting in touch unless he rang home. He tried it a few times, in the daytime when he knew Michael wouldn’t be there, but no one answered. Eventually Chris found out from his aunt what was happening. She had cancer. It had spread. She was due to start a course of high dose chemotherapy in the new year and would be in hospital for a few weeks. Chris came to see her. It was the first of many visits, all timed for when Michael wouldn’t be there.
In April 2002 she was told the cancer was terminal. The doctors weren’t sure how long she might have left. She went back to hospital for further treatment, but they were fighting a losing battle. Michael came to see her as often as he could, he always tried to be positive, even though she could see how much it was hurting him. As a result Chris had to try and bribe the nurses to let him visit outside visiting hours. He usually managed to do this.
She never told Michael she had been seeing Chris. She would have done, but she knew he would be annoyed and he had been so kind in those last few months. She almost loved him again, and worried how he would cope without her.
She died on July 4, 2002, ten days after her 54th birthday and a week before Chris’s 27th. The funeral procession went from their end terrace house to the church going past the nice detached houses that backed on to the park along the way. The cemetery she is buried in overlooks the parks and the houses.
After a couple of jobs in sewing factories she applied for a job as a wages clerk at a new company opening up on an industrial estate near here. She wanted to get this job because she was good at maths and it was different. She didn’t want to be just one of the factory girls.
She met Michael after she started the job. She liked him. He was young and ambitious, He was already a foreman and he was only 21. He would surely get on. Together the two of them could have a future together that would not be council houses and holidays in Paignton and Great Yarmouth. They married in 1969.
She wanted three, maybe four, children. She wasn’t sure. She also wanted a nice house. The sign you had made it was if you could get one of them semi-detached houses that backed on to the big park. That was her dream. The working-class dream.
Joan was working class. She was Crossroads and Coronation Street. She was never EastEnders. She was Dallas, not Dynasty. For Joan, John Thaw was Inspector Morse, he was never that bloke off the Sweeney.
Joan’s mother had also been aspirational. Her ambition was end of terrace house, talking over fences but having a back garden you didn’t have to cross an alleyway to reach. For both Joan and her mother the stars were out of reach, but the trees offered fruit if you had someone to help you climb them.
Joan achieved her mother’s dream with the end of terrace house. A big achievement and the first step on a ladder she never got to climb. Life intervened. Michael’s mother moved in. Thankfully she only stayed for a while, but although she was glad she moved out, she also thought that Michael shouldn’t object to her being happy and getting married again, but she never told him. She didn’t want to rock the boat, and now they had the house to themselves they could start to plan and have children and get the bigger house.
Michael said the time wasn’t right, ‘some of the factories are in trouble, we can’t get caught with a bigger mortgage we wouldn’t afford.’
Joan’s parents had been a bit unsure about Michael. They didn’t know that it was a good idea for their daughter to marry an Irish man, even though Joan told them you would never really guess he was Irish unless you met his mother, or his three older brothers, who all seemed to have inherited their parents fondness for Ireland even though they hardly ever went there when they were kids.
Around her parents friends and community, the news that she had married an Irish man was also a bit of a shock. ‘Aren’t they terrorists’ some had said, while others just said ‘no, they just drink and rob people.’ All of this meant that when Joan found out she was pregnant on the day of the IRA pub bombings, she knew that her parents might not take the news in the way they would otherwise have done.
They were worried for her and they were worried about what people would say to her. By people, they meant the people near to them who knew Michael had an Irish background. By her they also meant themselves.
They were right to worry. And not just about their neighbours. Some of Joan’s own neighbours who had met his mother were a bit colder with her after that day in 1974 and when she told them she was pregnant, there were perhaps not as many gifts and cards as there could have been, and the ones she did get weren’t as nice as they might have been.
And when the pregnancy really started to show, she decided not to go round to her parents house, she told them they had to come to her. They thought this was sensible. One of their neighbours had lost someone in the bombing and a woman walking round pregnant with an Irish man’s baby wasn’t a good idea.
She gave birth to Chris on 12 July 1975 the midway point in the trial of the Birmingham 6. Again, the amount of cards and flowers and good will messages were lower than they seemed to be for other people in her ward at The Manor Hospital.
No longer feeling as welcomed and settled in her end of terrace home, she was keen again to move. Michael was still worried about the risks of a bigger mortgage and needing to make sure they had enough money to raise Chris seemed to become another reason not to move, as well as a reason not to have another child just yet.
She began to give up hope of moving or of having any more children. She began to give up hope on Michael.
He wasn’t much of a father to Chris with the hours he worked. Parenting was her role and she loved her son so it was easy to do. He was the thing that kept her sane. That and her work, when she got another job after Chris started school.
It wasn’t the same firm she worked in before she got pregnant. It was a bigger firm in Wolverhampton that one of the solicitors had gone to. It was a good job and they were nice people that she worked with. But Joan felt she was not as well off as the others who worked there. They had bigger houses and bigger families. She worried about inviting them round to hers. She worried about their husbands meeting Michael, particularly after the factory he worked at closed in 1982. He was bitter, more hard-done-by, the ambition he had when they met and for the first few years they were together seemed to have been finally kicked out of him, particularly when his old boss hadn’t offered him a job at the new company he went to.
She wasn’t sure if she still loved Michael. If she’d stopped to think, she’d have realised that love had turned to tolerance, and tolerance had turned to habit and routine, offset by the twin distractions of work and motherhood.
Chris’s academic success pleased her. She hoped he would be a teacher. It was such a shame when he decided he didn’t want to be one. She really didn’t know why but did wonder whether it had something to do with his favourite teacher getting suspended for being gay. If he was gay. Someone at work, a young gay solicitor, explained clause 28 to her and she understood more about what it meant. Maybe he wasn’t gay, but it still didn’t explain why Chris didn’t want to be a teacher anymore and he didn’t want to tell her.
In a way she was glad, because it meant he stayed at home and got a job in a library. She was pleased he had friends although she wondered why they kept going up to Manchester and worried that Chris might move there. She was both happy and sad when he left home to do his degree there. She hoped he would come back home at the end of it. He went to London. She secretly hoped he wouldn’t like London and would return to the Midlands. He seemed relatively happy there.
At least he came back some of the weekends. Like the weekend before his birthday in July 1999 when he told her about what he had been doing. She knew what his dad was like and she knew it wasn’t a good idea to tell him. Unfortunately Chris didn’t.
After the row with his dad, she couldn’t ring him, she didn’t have a mobile and Michael always checked the phone bills to make sure they weren’t being overcharged. He also always answered the phone went it rang. She decided to call Chris from a call box. They established contact again and Chris used to travel up to meet her in Birmingham every couple of weeks. It had to be midweek so Michael didn’t know, and it wasn’t always easy, but it was always nice. A highlight of her week.
She started to think maybe she should just tell Michael. But it would cause a row, or a protracted silence, and she didn’t like either of those things. She could keep it as a secret that she shared with her sister. Her sister asked her why she didn’t just leave Michael. She didn’t have to live with him anymore, their son had left home and, if she was being honest, Michael hadn’t been the man she’d married for years.
Joan wasn’t sure. She could see what her sister was saying, but where could she go. Her sister told her she could live with her for a while till she got herself sorted. She said no, said that she couldn’t do that forever, didn’t have the money for a place of her own and didn’t know if she had the energy to start again.
But it was tempting, and each time she saw Chris the feeling grew that maybe she should do it. She had pretty much decided to make the leap when, in June 2001, she learned that she had cancer.
She told Michael. He was superb. He said all the right words, told her they’d beat this, there was no way cancer would take her from him. It was as much to reassure himself as it was to reassure her. His dad had died young, he didn’t want to lose another person he loved at an early age.
She didn’t tell Chris. She hoped a planned course of chemotherapy would be effective and he’d never have to know. She put off starting the course until after his birthday so that he wouldn’t see the hair loss when they met.
From August to December, she didn’t call him and as it was always her ringing him, he had no way of getting in touch unless he rang home. He tried it a few times, in the daytime when he knew Michael wouldn’t be there, but no one answered. Eventually Chris found out from his aunt what was happening. She had cancer. It had spread. She was due to start a course of high dose chemotherapy in the new year and would be in hospital for a few weeks. Chris came to see her. It was the first of many visits, all timed for when Michael wouldn’t be there.
In April 2002 she was told the cancer was terminal. The doctors weren’t sure how long she might have left. She went back to hospital for further treatment, but they were fighting a losing battle. Michael came to see her as often as he could, he always tried to be positive, even though she could see how much it was hurting him. As a result Chris had to try and bribe the nurses to let him visit outside visiting hours. He usually managed to do this.
She never told Michael she had been seeing Chris. She would have done, but she knew he would be annoyed and he had been so kind in those last few months. She almost loved him again, and worried how he would cope without her.
She died on July 4, 2002, ten days after her 54th birthday and a week before Chris’s 27th. The funeral procession went from their end terrace house to the church going past the nice detached houses that backed on to the park along the way. The cemetery she is buried in overlooks the parks and the houses.