Saving Gary McKinnon (2 page)

W
e had been brought up with virtually no technology apart from a radio, but about a year before we left our old house someone in the street got a TV to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. We were all invited in, and lots of us sat in our neighbour’s house watching the magical vision of TV for the very first time.

When our old community died I felt that a part of us had died too, but life, like Glasgow, was changing – as was the music.

My sister Lorna, who was almost six years older than I was and still charged with looking after me while my mum and dad worked, took me with her to the cinema for the first screening in Glasgow of the film
Rock around the Clock
. When we were in the cinema Lorna asked a few of her friends to keep an eye on me, and suddenly Lorna and other people in the cinema were dancing wildly in the aisles to this new music. At the age of eight I was witnessing the beginning of rock ’n’ roll. It was incredible.

Lorna danced like a wild thing, but I wanted to learn how to play the music.

Lorna used to teach me to jive and would throw me over her back no matter how reluctant I was or how much I protested; I had no choice as she was bigger than me.

I used to skip lunch at primary school to run home and play my two favourite Elvis Presley songs, ‘Big Hunk of Love’ and ‘One Night with You’ on a Dansette record player. Headphones were unheard of then but I used to put my ear next to the little inbuilt speaker, cover my head with my coat and turn the volume up full so that I was enclosed in a world of music. I hated having to switch the music off to rush back to school again.

One day Lorna sewed the name ‘Elvis’ onto her top using sequins and rhinestones and I thought it looked amazing. She offered to do the same for me, but my mum said I was too young to go to school with ‘Elvis’ emblazoned across my chest.

I went to bed and when I got up in the morning my mum handed me my top and the large sequined words across the chest read ‘Doris Day’. I could have cried. I looked at my mum and could see how tired she was. I knew she had been up all night sewing it for me and she so wanted me to like it. She had decided that Elvis on my top wasn’t appropriate at my age and had sewed Doris Day’s name on instead. She had no concept of how humiliating this would be for me to wear in school.

I couldn’t bear to hurt my mum so I wore the top and sat mortified in school all day as my classmates teased and ridiculed me. I never wore it again.

Music wasn’t just for kids – my mum adored Frank Sinatra and Irish music, whereas my dad’s taste was more operatic in the style of Mario Lanza. He often sang in Gaelic, his native language.

Even though we sometimes got up to mischief, my mum never hit us, although smacking was common at that time. She herself had a difficult upbringing with an abusive father but she still had an amazing sense of humour and, like many people in Glasgow, possessed an optimism and a strength that carried her through the darkest of times. Even against the most daunting odds she believed that anything was possible, as do I.

I was independent and used to go out on my own and wander through the fields and the woods with my dog. One day when I was walking along the canal bank, two boys had caught a large fish from the canal and I watched it gasping for breath as it was dying in front of me. Seeing the fish struggling to live upset me so much that I gave the boys sixpence to throw it back in the water. Watching it swimming to freedom made me feel so happy.

I always felt different from other people and it was a huge relief when a new girl named Jean Connolly came to our school. We got on like wildfire and talked continuously, and both of us had an opinion on just about everything – which also caused us to argue at times.

We believed that we could change the movement of the clouds with the power of our thought. We’d cycle for miles and walk across fields barefoot with flowers in our hair, aspiring to emulate the romanticised lifestyle of a gypsy girl we had read about in story books. Our feet not being as tough as the gypsy girl’s meant going barefoot didn’t last long.

We also used to love playing in the fog that would descend on Glasgow at that time. The fog was so thick that sometimes you couldn’t see two feet in front of you. It was like another world or a spooky film and we would call each other’s names and then jump out and grab each other from behind, scaring the living daylights out of ourselves and dissolving into laughter. Coal fires were banned some years later, making thick fog a rarity.

Jean came from a big, warm family. Her dad was a lamp-lighter, who lit the gas streetlights in many areas of Glasgow.

When a fifteen-year-old boy who lived with his grandmother
was rendered homeless after her death, he went to live with Jean’s family. This was Charlie McKinnon, who was destined to become a big part of my life.

Glasgow was full of warm-hearted people. Whenever you visited friends, no matter how much or how little they had, they would invite you to have dinner with them and always made you feel welcome.

From the age of eleven I attended North Kelvinside Secondary School, one of the best in the area. Although I was in the top girls’ class and passed exams with flying colours, every stage of school felt like prison to me. School holidays were a huge relief and it was on one of these holidays I found a new love that would underscore my life.

One summer I went to Butlins with my family and this is where I first heard the song ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles. I had never heard music like this before: it was new and energetic and optimistic and I was in love with this song. My friend Jean and I started going to pop concerts, which is where I first saw and heard another legendary band, the Bee Gees. We started to dress differently from the other girls we knew, trying to look like the girls in The Ronettes, who had the hit record ‘Be My Baby’.

Some of the other girls from school said we looked ‘gallus’ in our black trousers and jackets, but we noticed at the school dance, when our parents made us wear party dresses, that it was girls who seemed prim and as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths who were getting up to things that their parents might have been less than happy about.

Jean and I used to stand on the table using a hairbrush as a microphone and sing our hearts out, pretending we were on stage. Eventually we acquired an old tape recorder with a real microphone and we were able to make our own recordings.

Some of Jean’s brother’s friends formed a band, and one day I asked if I could try their electric guitar. I taught myself to play the riff from ‘Peter Gunn’, an instrumental song by Duane Eddy. The boy took the guitar back from me quite abruptly. At the time I thought it was because I hadn’t played it well but when I got older I realised that it was probably because I had played it too well and too quickly.

Because I loved animals so much I wanted to be a vet and thought I would stay on at school to get the qualifications, but when I found out that part of the job would involve putting healthy animals down, I knew there was no way I could do it. So I left school just a few months before my fifteenth birthday. I decided to go out to work and earn my own money while I figured out what I’d like to do with my life.

It was 1963. Glasgow was bursting with energy and with an eclectic mix of musicians, artists, dancers, singers and writers. In May there had been anti-Vietnam War protests in Britain, and music was changing in line with the mood of the people. The world was changing and there was a sense of freedom in the air. I felt I belonged in this brave new world.

O
ne of my first jobs was at a clothes boutique in the centre of Glasgow. It was always busy and the other girls who worked there were full of fun. Occasionally, in a mischievous mood, they would drag their feet along the nylon carpet to build up a static charge in their fingertips and then touch the back of the neck of one of the unsuspecting young male customers, saying, ‘Can I help you?' The boys would jump at the shock and then join in with our laughter. They never seemed to get annoyed at all.

I had known Charlie McKinnon since I was twelve years old and saw him regularly as he was living with my best friend's family. We fell in love when I was fourteen years old and got engaged when I was fifteen but I think I loved Charlie from the first moment I saw him. He was and is one of the kindest and most caring people I've ever known. He was a huge Elvis fan and an excellent singer, performing in pubs and always working hard at whatever job he was doing.

I saved up all my wages, as did he, and we bought a flat when I was fifteen years old, which was as unusual at that time as it is now.

We were planning to get married four days after my sixteenth birthday, and visited the man from the church to organise the banns. It's perfectly legal to marry at the age of sixteen in Scotland
and no parental permission is needed, which is why for centuries many young couples fled from England to Gretna Green, just over the border, where a marriage can be conducted by a blacksmith.

Gretna Green is still one of the world's most popular wedding destinations, hosting over 5,000 weddings each year. All the weddings are performed over an iconic blacksmith's anvil and the blacksmiths in Gretna became known as anvil priests.

Because the church official we had visited was worried about me being so young and was afraid that my parents might not have known I was getting married, he called unexpectedly at our house. The man explained his concerns about my age and my mum told him she had advised me that because of my age the marriage had a higher chance of failure but that in the end I made my own decisions. Charlie was a good person whom my mum and dad trusted and were fond of.

Charlie and I married four days after my sixteenth birthday, as planned. It was a freezing cold December day and Charlie's friend Jim, Jean's brother, who was the best man, had flu and collapsed in church during the ceremony. Fortunately he soon recovered and Charlie and I were married, with Jean as my maid of honour. Seeing the photos now, I look like a little girl dressed up as a bride.

We were married the year that hundreds of students demonstrated against the Vietnam War in New York's Times Square and twelve young men publicly burned their draft cards – the first such act of war resistance.

Gary was born just over a year later in 1966, the same year the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, refused to send British troops to Vietnam. I was seventeen years old.

My mum had worried that because of my impulsive nature and my age, I might change quite quickly and want to follow another path in life, and in a way she was right. I went into hospital as a very young girl who was in love, happy with her life and about to have a baby, and I came home almost as a stranger, with a totally different outlook.

I looked around the one-bedroom flat that was home and saw it as dark and dull. I was upset because my pet bird had died and I thought that someone had forgotten to feed it. Above all, I felt as though I didn't belong there anymore. I felt guilty for changing but the change just happened.

When I went out to shops or to the park and saw other girls with their babies, I didn't feel a connection with them. Many very young girls had three or four children and this scared me so much that I decided then and there that I only ever wanted to have one child.

I also knew I couldn't live in the same place forever until I died, as many people did at that time. Just the thought of that terrified me.

When Gary was born he was healthy and well but wouldn't feed. The nurses were concerned about it but left me to deal with it and I was panicking. I don't remember how long it took or how I managed it but it seemed to take forever before I eventually succeeded.

I used to be fascinated just watching Gary for hours as he lay in his cot. It was amazing that this little life had come from inside me.

I initially saw Gary as a baby that I fed and cared for and was protective towards. I loved it when he gripped my fingers with his tiny hands but when Gary said his first words I was totally smitten – I realised that he was a real little person, and he was my little person.

Gary stood up in his cot one day, looked at us and said clearly, ‘Mammy, Daddy.' He was about ten months old and from that day on his speech came on leaps and bounds.

Charlie made a brilliant dad. He had an amazing and very natural Glasgow sense of humour, like Billy Connolly, and he made everyone laugh.

Before Gary was born I had a dream about a baby with a mischievous face, auburn hair and freckles, wearing a nappy and running through puddles. I told my family about the dream but voiced doubt that any baby of mine would have auburn hair and freckles as I had dark hair.

Sometimes I feel as though life is scripted in some unfathomable way and then occasionally, just occasionally, little snatches of this great narrative are revealed in a dream or a moment of déjà vu.

When Gary was born he had downy black hair and blue eyes, but his eye colour changed from blue to green and as time passed his hair became a beautiful shade of auburn.

So gradual was the change that it was only when he was about eighteen months old that I recognised Gary as being the baby from my dream.

From the age of two or three, Gary was obsessed by space and used to lie in bed beside me, talking about the stars as we gazed up at the night sky through the bedroom window. He wanted to know the names of the planets and how far away they were, and seemed to grasp concepts of space that eluded me. He had an unusual way of seeing but often made an odd kind of sense. When he was about five years old he said, ‘Mummy, was Noah's Ark a spaceship?'

‘Well, I suppose it might have been, I hadn't really thought about it.'

‘Well, do you think Noah just took seeds of all the different animals so that he could grow them later? Because there wouldn't have been enough room for all of the animals, would there?'

My marriage to Charlie drifted into friendship and it seemed that my mum was right. Many people who marry at such a young age often change so much that their lives take them down separate paths, causing the marriage to break down.

Gary was five years old when we separated but his dad, who is now happily married to Jeanna, has remained close to Gary and is a major part of his life. Jeanna and Charlie have three sons together and Charlie also has a daughter, giving Gary four siblings. Charlie was a huge part of my life and knowing he is happy makes me happy.

I met Wilson when Gary was six years old and quickly discovered that as well as being a musician, Wilson was into space, UFOs and science fiction. He used to live near Bonnybridge, a place that's often referred to as the UFO capital of the world. Naturally, Gary liked this idea and quizzed Wilson constantly on this subject.

We moved to London in 1972, where there were more work opportunities for musicians and artists like Wilson. There was already serious interest in Wilson's band Aegis, and a producer of note had arranged to record them in a top London studio.

We arrived in Muswell Hill in north London; a friend from Glasgow named Dougie Thomson was renting a flat there and we stayed with him for a few nights.

Fate can be quite amazing sometimes. While in Glasgow Dougie, who was a bass player, had once told us that he intended to quit his band, The Beings, and travel to London to get a job
with either of his two favourite bands – The Alan Bown Set and Supertramp.

Dougie Thomson arrived in London and had been there for only weeks when he joined The Alan Bown Set; he had the advantage of knowing all their songs inside out. As if that wasn't amazing enough, a short time later Dougie went for an audition with his other favourite band, Supertramp, and again he knew all the songs, played brilliantly, got the job and became a key member of Supertramp.

It was coming up to Christmas and Wilson and I were searching for a place to live. We were standing outside Highgate tube station when a young guy with long hair and a cockney accent came up to Wilson and said, ‘Hi man, I'm Johnnie Allen, we were at school together. What are you doing here?'

‘We're looking for a flat.'

‘Come back to ours, everyone is away on tour and you can stay there.'

Johnnie was working as the road manager for a band named Uriah Heep. He was just about to go off to Italy on tour, so we happily accepted and went with him back to the large Edwardian flat in Muswell Hill. Johnnie was pleased I was there as he thought I could cook Christmas dinner, including a large turkey he'd bought. He looked so disappointed when I told him I was a vegetarian and couldn't bring myself to cook the turkey.

The flat had lots of large rooms with high ceilings and French doors that led onto a beautiful garden. Johnnie told us we could stay as long as we wanted. He then left to go on tour and every time someone from one of the bands arrived home we had to explain who we were, which we dreaded as it was so embarrassing.

Eventually James Litherland, whose flat it actually was, arrived home. Jim had played and sung with the band Colosseum, and luckily he recognised Wilson as they had played at some of the
same venues. Jim was kind and friendly and said it was fine for us to stay there until we found a place of our own, which we did very shortly afterwards.

Jim has remained a lifelong and very dear friend, and is one of the kindest and most caring people we have ever met, as is his wife Helen. Their son James Blake is now making his own mark on the music world.

The Vietnam War was on everyone's mind at that time and musicians like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young played their part in exposing its brutality and helping to end it.

Through the efforts of people such as John Pilger, the photo of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl named Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked down the street, her body burning with napalm, was broadcast. The worldwide protests against the war and the outrage of the American people in reaction to this image were what finally led to the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War in August 1973.

In 1974 Wilson and I got married in Wood Green to the music of Pink Floyd – an edited version of ‘Us and Them', extending the instrumental to last throughout the ceremony before David Gilmour's voice came in on the verse.

Wilson looked every inch the musician with his long hair and d'Artagnan-style moustache. An excited Gary looked beyond cute and my mum had travelled down from Glasgow to be with us.

I love London. I've loved it since the day we arrived here. I love the buildings, the history and the fact that when you stand in Westminster Abbey you are surrounded by the spirit of so many great figures you were taught about in school.

We continued to live in Muswell Hill and Gary attended Muswell Hill Primary School. One day while sitting at the kitchen table Gary asked us when the world was going to end and we reassured him that it would be around for a very long time. He was obsessed with the end of the world and kept pressing us for a date, and was agitated and upset that, instead of telling him when, we were trying to reassure him that it wouldn't be ending until long after we were all gone.

Gary then asked if I was going to die one day and I told him yes, everyone dies sometime. He dissolved into tears. He then asked if Wilson was going to die, if his dad was going to die and if his grandma was going to die, and he cried more and more when I told him again that everyone dies sometime but that it wouldn't happen until we were very old, which would not be for a very, very long time.

No matter how much I tried to comfort him, Gary was inconsolable. He missed his dad and wanted us all to be together; Charlie eventually moved to London to work and met his new wife Jeanna, which was great for Gary as he then had everyone he loved around him.

Although Gary was only six years old he had already been taught fractions and some French at Dunard Street School in Glasgow, and had started reading at the age of three. When he started at Muswell Hill Primary School the class was being given counters to learn how to count and
Jack and Jill
books to read – Gary was bored as the education seemed to be years behind his previous school. Although I was surprised at this, I quickly realised that the school excelled in English and was very good at giving children confidence in themselves and encouraging them to develop good communication and social skills, something Gary needed help with.

Gary became restless and would sometimes wander out of
school and come home, and I'd have to take him back again. He liked being at home, as he felt he didn't fit in at school and was becoming more and more unhappy there. Gary preferred the company of adults. His classmates bullied him for being ‘different' and his Scottish accent also set him apart. There were basic skills and concepts that he found difficult to grasp and this was at odds with his obvious intelligence.

Gary had difficulty opening all sorts of things, but would take toys and locks apart to see how they worked – never putting them back together again. He also had difficulty following instructions and I used to think he was having us on. He would often get the wrong end of the stick because he took everything literally. His directness could also be misconstrued as rude and could sometimes make people feel awkward.

We only holidayed abroad once because of Gary's fear of travel and resultant meltdown when he was too far from home.

His was a literal world, a world of logic; outside of that world chaos reigned.