The Kellys of Kelvingrove
Read The Kellys of Kelvingrove Online
Authors: Margaret Thomson Davis
I dedicate
The Kellys of Kelvingrove
to the memory of Joe Fisher who, over many years, never failed to find answers to my research questions when he worked in the Mitchell Library.
He advised an endless number of writers who will never forget him and will always be grateful for his generous help.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to my dear friend, Michael Malone, who wrote all the poetry in this novel.
Also my thanks to retired Detective Inspector Robert Barrowman QPN, who has conscientiously helped me with several novels.
Police officer Jack Kelly and his friend Eric Gilroy were off duty and looking forward to the Old Firm match. They were both well wrapped up in coats and woolen scarves because it was a grey, misty day.
As they met up after leaving their tenement flats, Eric said, ‘We’ll be lucky if we can see the match if this gets any worse.’
‘It’ll take more than a smir of rain and a bit of mist to stop the Old Firm match.’
Already enormous crowds were flooding the streets. Thousands of men were aiming in the same direction – Ibrox Park and the Old Firm match between Celtic and Rangers. Both Jack and Eric were wearing Rangers scarves. The nearest subway station to Ibrox was Copeland Road and the platform there was difficult to negotiate because of the mountains of mail bags lying around as a result of the postal strike. There were mail bags piled up in all sorts of places all over the town.
At last Jack and Eric were inside the stadium and standing tightly packed together with the rest of the eighty thousand spectators. A fantastic, exciting match got going. Jack and Eric clutched their heads and bawled out when Jimmy Johnstone put Celtic ahead. Then, with only seconds remaining, Colin Stein grabbed the equaliser. Bobby Lennox smashed a drive at the Rangers goal. Gerry Neef, making his first league appearance of the season for the Light Blues, touched the ball on to the bar. The ball went crashing back into play and wee Jimmy Johnstone brought out a tremendous roar from Celtic fans as he sent the ball speeding into the back of the net. That looked like the end for Rangers but up they came with a glorious Colin Stein equaliser with only seconds remaining.
Most of the spectators filed happily away towards home but at the end of the stadium where Jack and Eric were standing, something terrible started happening. People had begun to go down the stairs to leave when they thought Rangers had lost, but when the goal was scored at the last minute and there was a roar from the other fans, they turned to rush up again. This coincided with a massive number of spectators still making their way towards the exit and the subway.
Then someone carrying a young boy on his shoulders fell. Others tripped and fell on top of him. Crash barriers on the stairway were broken by the crowds as fans piled on top of one another.
Up until then, the match had been a fairly good-natured occasion with no trouble either on the terraces or on the pitch. Now, as Jack and Eric looked in horror at the twisted bodies, they were reminded of Belsen because the bodies were entangled as they had been in the pictures which came out of the concentration camps. Both Jack and Eric struggled in among the victims in a desperate effort to pull people free. Jack groaned in agony as his hip was crushed. But he used every last vestige of strength to continue to clamber around the mangle of bodies and stricken souls to save whoever he could.
Everyone, whether Rangers of Celtic supporters, forgot their normal allegiances and fought to save whoever they could in a frenzy of activity. Others were grappling onto whatever they could find to avoid falling into the carnage. One man managed to push his son over the fence to safety before he was immediately swept away with the force of the crowd. As his son shouted to him, he saw his father die upright, the life squeezed out of him.
Bodies were turning black. Others who had any breath left in them were receiving frantic help. A priest was fighting to resuscitate a man wearing Rangers colours. An Orangeman was struggling desperately to pull a Celtic supporter free.
Jack lost sight of Eric and prayed that he had escaped injury. Many people, still wearing their club colours, were trying to pull people free. Ambulances and police cars and fire engines had arrived but had some difficulty in reaching the scene because home-going crowds leaving the match, many of them drunk, were unaware of the tragedy.
Jack knew many of the police officers and one of them pulled him out.
‘For God’s sake, Jack, you’ve done enough. Go home.’ Then he saw Jack limping.
‘No, get into the ambulance. I’ll get them to take you to the Southern General.’
‘I’ve got to find Eric. Eric Gilroy. He was with me.’
‘We’ll find him, Jack. Get into the ambulance.’
‘No, I’m OK. Just got a bit crushed. Isn’t this a terrible tragedy? It all happened so quickly. I’ve never seen anything like it, have you? Come on, we’d better help to lay out the bodies.’
There were bodies in the dressing rooms, in the gymnasium, even in the laundry room. Many were already dead. Others were having resuscitation given to them by training staff. Doctors and nurses flocked to join them in doing everything possible to bring breath back to crushed bodies.
‘I’ll never forget,’ Jack said later, ‘seeing Bob Rooney, the Celtic physiotherapist, with tears in his eyes, giving the kiss of life to innumerable victims.’
Eventually Eric Gilroy was found among the dead and Jack was reduced to tears.
‘He was a good, conscientious police officer.’
One of the other policemen said, ‘And he died as he lived – trying to help others.’
Jack limped sadly away, knowing he would never forget this misty day of the second of January 1971.
Jack was persuaded to get a medical check-up. It was decided eventually that there was nothing much more they could do for his crushed hip, except he would, from now on, be confined to working limited hours in the police station and at the desk. He missed getting out and around on the beat but knew he was lucky to have survived the Ibrox tragedy and so he accepted his lot.
But he’d gone off the area where he lived. He’d gone off his tiny one-bedroomed tenement flat. It hadn’t even a bathroom, just a pokey wee lavatory.
All right, he’d taken the flat originally because he had a thing – a horror in fact – of getting into debt. He had a savings account and everything he ever bought or had was paid in cash. The flat had a very low rent and that’s why he and his wife Mae had moved in there. Every stick of furniture in the flat had been bought with cash. No way would he ever consider hire purchase. For one thing, he’d seen too many people get over their heads in debt and become dishonest as a result, and indeed end up in jail.
So he and his wife Mae had always lived very frugally and carefully, although he always felt a bit embarrassed, ashamed even, that he couldn’t invite his friends to the flat for a meal and a bit of friendly hospitality. The kitchen in the flat was small and overcrowded with just a table and chairs and a cooker and a stand for the pots and pans. There was one other room where he and Mae slept.
They desperately needed a bigger house but it would have to be rented. A fair-sized rented house wasn’t easy to come by these days. Not that Mae ever complained. She was a good-natured soul – a plump wee blonde who hardly reached past his elbow.
Indeed, she seemed perfectly happy in the tiny tenement flat. He had to sigh and shake his head at her when she said, ‘As long as you’re there, it’s fine with me.’
Never before had it been less than fine for him. He supposed his feelings stemmed from the Ibrox disaster. He had never bothered all that much about the flat before.
But now, although he never confessed to anyone, he still had nightmares about the event. Even when he looked out the tenement window, he could see the crowds milling along towards the subway. In his nightmares, he could still see the piles of mangled corpses, some a ghastly dark blue colour, some black. Many standing up had had the life crushed out of them and had turned black.
Some people, indeed many people, had to undergo long treatments by psychiatrists after their experiences at Ibrox but he could not succumb to anything like that. He was after all a serving police officer. It was his duty, he believed, always to show courage. It was a strain, especially when he suffered continuous pain with his hip, as well as the emotional and mental strain. But he was determined to manage.
He told his pals on the beat, ‘Keep your eye open for a rented place for me in a nice district, as far from my present dump as possible. OK?’
‘Sure, Jack,’ they all agreed. ‘No problem.’ Eventually, God bless them, they found a perfect place.
‘How can I ever thank you,’ he gasped when he saw the house and the lovely situation it was in.
‘You can invite us all for slap up dinners in your posh new dining room,’ they all told him.
‘Don’t worry,’ he promised. ‘I certainly will.’
First there were the funerals. Everyone paid their respects but what could anyone say? What consolation could anyone offer? Normally a funeral is of somebody of a ripe old age and an occasion to be treated as a celebration of that person’s life. But here there had been five young lads between only thirteen and fifteen years of age from the same village. There had been lads from other places aged thirteen, fourteen, sixteen and eighteen. The oldest man, as far as Jack knew, had been in his forties.
Lord Provost Sir Donald Liddle wept at a press conference when he made an announcement about the dead.
There had been an eighteen-year-old girl who should have had the rest of her life in front of her. Apparently, she had been a great Rangers supporter and she had made a wee doll of Colin Stein. She worked in a factory and the girls who worked beside her dared her to go to Ibrox and deliver it to him personally. And because she was a cheery extrovert of a girl, she did.
Jack found the funeral services nearly reduced him to tears each time. He imagined how the families of the victims must be feeling. He admired the football players of both teams who turned up each time to pay their respects. Police officers attended as well.
Jack said to one of them, ‘The worst of all is they were so young. They should have been able to enjoy so many more years of life.’
‘I know, and there’s nothing that any of us can say to the families that would be of any help or comfort.’
It seemed to go on endlessly and only the thought of the house his police officer pals had found for him kept Jack going. Over and over, he imagined welcoming them into the spacious dining room and treating them to a good dinner. It would be his way of thanking them for literally saving his bacon. There had been so many times recently when he thought he was going mad.