The Long Journey Home
Some stories appear complete the moment they happen.
A chance reunion had brought together a young Royal Navy sailor, his stepfather and two workmates in a Portsmouth public house. They had spent an enjoyable evening playing darts, passing the time over cards, sharing conversation and making acquaintances that lasted long beyond the closing hour. Eventually, as public houses emptied and the city settled into the quieter hours of the night, the party broke up.
The sailors returned towards Portsmouth Dockyard and HMS Glamorgan. Pop, together with Pete and Pete, headed back to their lodgings. Another working day awaited the builders before the long drive north to Manchester.
Nothing about the farewell suggested there was anything more to tell.
From the sailor's point of view, the story was over.
Thursday passed uneventfully aboard ship. Friday brought weekend leave, and the familiar journey home to Manchester. It was an ordinary pattern repeated countless times throughout naval service. Leave meant family, familiar surroundings and, in this particular case, the expectation of seeing Pop again after only a brief separation.
There was every reason to believe he would already be home.
Instead, an unexpected question greeted the traveller almost as soon as he arrived.
"Where's Pop?"
It came from Essie.
The question itself made no sense.
Surely he had returned with his workmates after completing the job in Portsmouth. That had always been the plan. The building work finished, everyone climbed into the company van and drove back to Manchester. There seemed no obvious reason why matters should have unfolded differently.
Essie's reply was enough to remove any lingering certainty.
He had not come home.
For a while nobody appeared to know where he was.
Telephone calls were neither as immediate nor as commonplace as they would become in later decades. If someone was delayed unexpectedly, families often had little option but to wait and hope that an explanation would eventually appear. Hours passed.
Then, on Saturday, Pop walked through the front door.
He looked decidedly worse for wear.
His clothes bore the unmistakable evidence of someone who had been unwell. He complained of a substantial headache. One hand was bruised, although quite how it had acquired that injury seemed as uncertain as everything else surrounding his delayed return.
His recollection of events was fragmentary.
Certain moments remained perfectly clear.
He distinctly remembered climbing onto the great stone lions outside Portsmouth Guildhall. The statues had long been a familiar landmark in the city centre and, for reasons known only to himself at the time, had apparently seemed an entirely reasonable place to spend part of the evening.
After that, his memories became rather less dependable.
He recalled speaking with police officers.
He remembered trying to persuade them that there was really no need to take matters any further.
He also remembered that his efforts had failed.
Beyond those scattered recollections, certainty faded rapidly.
Pop consistently maintained that he had not been arrested.
According to his account, the police had simply "taken him in" until he had sobered up. In the circumstances, such an approach was hardly unusual for the period. Dealing with an otherwise respectable individual who had enjoyed rather more refreshment than was advisable often called for common sense rather than criminal proceedings.
Pete and Pete, however, offered an altogether different interpretation.
They cheerfully insisted that Pop had indeed been arrested.
Whether this reflected what had actually happened or merely represented an irresistible opportunity to tease a friend has never been entirely clear. They appeared to enjoy maintaining their version with considerable enthusiasm, while Pop remained equally determined to defend his own.
No documentary evidence ever surfaced to settle the matter one way or the other.
Perhaps that was just as well.
Some family stories survive precisely because they are impossible to prove.
Essie, understandably, viewed the whole affair rather differently.
Her husband had disappeared somewhere between Portsmouth and Manchester without warning, eventually returning home in a thoroughly dishevelled condition with only an incomplete explanation of where he had been. Relief at seeing him safely home was accompanied by an entirely justified expression of opinion regarding the wisdom of the whole adventure.
Pop accepted it with characteristic good humour.
He rarely attempted elaborate excuses.
Whatever had happened in Portsmouth had happened, and there was little to be gained by arguing about it.
The younger members of the family naturally found the episode considerably more entertaining.
Having confirmed that Pop was perfectly well, there remained only one sensible course of action.
The story had to be shared.
Friends were informed at the earliest opportunity that the dependable, well-respected Tug Wilson had apparently managed to become involved in an encounter with Portsmouth's finest after an evening that had begun so innocently. The details varied according to the audience, as good stories often do, but the central theme remained reassuringly constant.
It was impossible to resist.
Over the years that followed, the incident became firmly established as part of family folklore.
Whenever conversation drifted towards memorable occasions, someone would eventually mention Portsmouth. Before long the stone lions would make their inevitable appearance, followed closely by questions about whether Pop had actually been arrested after all.
He answered those questions in exactly the same manner every time.
No.
He had merely been "taken in".
The distinction mattered greatly to him.
It mattered rather less to everyone else.
The family persisted in referring to "the time Pop got arrested," largely because it produced the strongest reaction from Pete and Pete and a resigned smile from Pop himself. Like many enduring family legends, accuracy gradually became less important than the pleasure of telling the story again.
There was, however, another side to the episode.
It demonstrated something fundamental about Pop's character.
He never allowed an embarrassing incident to become a source of bitterness or defensiveness. He laughed at himself as readily as anyone else laughed with him. That ability perhaps explains why so many people warmed to him throughout his life. He neither demanded admiration nor expected sympathy. He simply accepted life's occasional absurdities with quiet good humour and carried on.
Looking back across more than fifty years, the precise truth of that Portsmouth night is probably unknowable.
Did the police formally arrest him?
Or did they simply remove an otherwise harmless man from an awkward situation until he was fit to continue his journey?
The available evidence refuses to provide a definitive answer.
Perhaps it never will.
Oddly enough, the uncertainty has become part of the story's charm.
Family history does not always consist of carefully documented facts. More often it survives through remembered conversations, repeated anecdotes and good-natured disagreements over exactly what happened. Such stories reveal personalities every bit as effectively as official records.
Whatever occurred after leaving the Nine Elms, one fact remains beyond dispute.
The man who had voluntarily travelled hundreds of miles on the mere chance of seeing his stepson safely completed the journey home, accepted years of affectionate teasing without complaint and somehow transformed an awkward episode into another story that would still be making people smile half a century later.
It was, in its own understated way, entirely typical of Tug Wilson.
Primary source: RN-002
RN-E-118
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