Children of Courage and Achievement: the Dark Origins of 'Harrison Poe'
Three years ago, when my sister first announced that she'd invited her friends Isobel and Lizzie to join us for Christmas Eve, my response was less than enthusiastic. Christine's assertion that I "sulked" is an overstatement, but I was certainly concerned that our (already beleaguered) festive traditions would be further undermined by the introduction of such vociferous adherents to an 'alternative' lifestyle. Spencer's pub friends have already subjected our simple but sincere celebration to a withering analysis: five years ago my attempt to sing Here We Come A-Wassailing was disrupted by shouts of 'Let's crucify Hamilton!' and culminated in the necessity of calling P.C. Jackson. "Well, that was a total over-reaction," said Christine when I reminded her. "In any case, I've never seen Isobel or Lizzie pelt anyone with empty beer cans... however much he might be monopolising proceedings!"
I'm happy to concede that my fears were confounded. From the outset, in fact, Lizzie and particularly Isobel's participation in communal singing and games has been so whole-hearted that Muriel and even Spencer are invariably cajoled into entering the spirit of the occasion. This Christmas, nothing has given me greater satisfaction than the sight of my brother's normally sullen features brightening as he secured his team victory at 'Cards in the Hat' by successfully tossing a succession of playing cards into my grandfather's upturned trilby from a distance of twelve feet. Admittedly, my proffered hand and exclamation of "Well done, sir!" caused an instantaneous reversion to his habitual expression of subdued loathing, nonetheless, the glimpse of the child within, however fleeting, vindicated my faith in the possibilities of Christmas.
For the second successive year, the only element of awkwardness was caused by Christine who persists in referring to the coincidence of Isobel and I both being recipients of a Henderson crystal for Children of Courage and Achievement. "Izzie and Hamilton can be the Henderson kids," she said as she organised us into teams at the start of the evening. Despite my warning glower, she proceeded to repeat the offence at every opportunity. Her insensitivity would have been galling enough even were it not for the fact that I specifically cautioned her against the same gaffe last year. On that occasion, I was eventually goaded into pointing out the fact that while I received my award in 1984 under the late Gordon Henderson's stewardship, Isobel's 'achievements' were recognised in 1987 by which time his son Dougal had taken over, precipitating a terminal decline. "So you don't consider Isobel a worthy winner?" demanded Lizzie, forcing me to acknowledge that while her struggle against gender confusion exacerbated the difficulties of adolescence, it hardly entitled her to a place on the Henderson pantheon of honour alongside such luminaries as Angus Nicol, Margaret Farquhar and (dare I say it) Hamilton Coe. Spencer, naturally, seized on the opportunity to capitalise on my alienation. "What were you nominated for, anyway, Hamilton? Services to homophobia?" Further unpleasantness was only averted by the unexpected arrival of Christine's estranged husband Guy whose presence provided the temporary bond of a common enemy.
In her book about my career Nina Kelly argues that my nomination was only accepted after Gordon Henderson, beset by family problems and the initial symptoms of senility, capitulated to my aunt's incessant campaigning and, she implies, blackmail. This is completely erroneous and offensive to Hendersons and Coes alike. While various other parties might have suggested my nomination, my aunt and I were too busy pursuing cases to expend our energies soliciting awards. For his part, Gordon Henderson would never have considered a candidate he considered unworthy. His calibre can be gauged by his refusal to capitulate to the anti-Coe campaign prompted by my nomination. In the weeks preceding the ceremony, I was renounced from seventeen separate pulpits (of all denominations) and excoriated in a Glasgow Herald editorial in the course of which I was described as "possessing a face like a malevolent planet", an insult to which I'm still regularly subjected. By the time of the ceremony at Dundee's Caird Hall, the mob had been thoroughly riled. My investure as 1984's Child of Courage and Achievement was punctuated by terrace style chants and bouts of egg throwing that compelled Mr Henderson to act as a human shield. By the end of my acceptance speech, we were both covered in yolk. "Friendship! Integrity! Valour!" I concluded defiantly, turning to acknowledge the man who had shown such faith in my abilities. Sadly, Henderson was already being escorted from the stage, a broken man. By the end of the week he'd resigned his position citing an unspecified stress related illness. Within a year he was dead.
While his father had no compunction in rejecting nominations based entirely on affliction and misfortune, Dougal, cursed by a weakling's need to be liked, rubber stamped every application with the consequence that the awards became meaningless. Incapable of self-assertion, he was coerced into accepting nominations of parties unfit to share a roster with the Children of Courage and Achievement of the past. I'm a compassionate person, but sickness is no achievement in itself, however stoicially borne. Further damage to the awards' credibility was caused by Dougal's indulgence of the politically driven celebrities who were offered honorary directorships. Their influence resulted in the Hendersons coveted crystal trophies being presented to a succession of smirking activists whose only 'achievements' had been to picket, pester and harass people trying to go about their business.
Comedienne Rosie Smith was particularly culpable in adding a political element to the ceremony. .I knew Ms Smith even before she was opted onto the Henderson board. While I was still active in criminal investigations it wasn't uncommon to arrive at a crime scene to find her already in attendance. In 1992, we were both guests on the Jackie Park radio show discussing crime trends from the respective points of view of acknowledged expert and minor-celebrity. Miscalculating her own status, Smith reduced what might have been an informative interview to farce, contradicting me by repeating what I later discovered were her television catch phrases. The next week she referred to me as a ‘ghoul' in her Daily Record column - an example, if I may say, of the pot calling the kettle black. At the time, I argued that she exhibited pronounced symptoms of a psychopathic personality disorder. If anything, this opinion was vindicated by subsequent developments, in particular her intemperate response when a botched surveillance operation resulted in my being trapped overnight in her conservatory.
As a past winner, I objected to Ms Smith's elevation to a dual role of jurist and presenter. Unfortunately, my reservations were ignored with disastrous results. Ms Smith, as any sensible person might have anticipated, completely hijacked the proceedings. Starting with a huskily bellowed rendition of 'Try a Little Tenderness' she would then embark upon a grisly bombardment of 'patter'. This was so excruciating that there was a gradual exodus of people unable to endure any more of her gormless observations. By the time she got round to tearfully acknowledging the nominees (all, incidentally, selected on the basis of belligerence or misfortune) the hall was only half full and remaining audience members so heartily despised her that her every announcement was greeted with jeers. After the third of these travesties, I returned my own Henderson crystal in disgust.
* * *
The slanders I endured at the time of my nomination were obviously damaging on a personal level. My brother, Spencer, and his friends rejoiced in imitating the freakish version of myself featured in The People Who Saw Tomorrow and there was a brief craze amongst the district's ‘alternative' set of Hamilton Coe themed parties, one of which Spencer tricked me into attending. I received anonymous letters threatening to have me killed, exorcised or forcibly baptised while The Hamilton Coe Society formed by my aunt to keep well-wishers updated on my activities was deluged by enquiries from unsavoury characters demanding Hamilton Coe information packs and lapel badges. Rival societies were established by unauthorised persons disseminating completely false information and my aunt was eventually so destabilised by the pressure that the official society ceased operation, leaving six bogus versions competing to invent increasingly sordid and ridiculous Hamilton Coe adventures. These, incidentally, were the original source of many of the rumours propagated about my activities, several of which have been recounted as actual occurrences in Nina Kelly's recent book. While all of the authors united in predictably crude innuendo (that Hamilton Coe is a chronic masturbator, that he is a peeping Tom, etc) some indulged in extravagant flights of fancy that suggested I was a superman. One in particular sent out weekly cliff-hangers, each of which was produced with intricate attention to detail. I remember one in which a villainous confectioner baked me into a cheesecake, another in which I was lured into a so-called Chamber of Feculence in which I was slowly asphyxiated by foul emissions. Each of these episodes would conclude with the query, “Is this the end for Hamilton Coe, boy of mystery?” and, in truth, for most people it would have been. To construct a false identity for someone is a form of black magic. You force your victim into a limbo between his real self and the image you have constructed for him. It's a dangerous experiment, particularly when conducted by those too stupid to appreciate the consequences. I was determined, however, not to be overwhelmed by malice. When my aunt recovered from her stress induced breakdown we set about the grim task of identifying the various authors, compiling a dossier on each and distributing the information in a special thirty page newsletter, incorporating particularly foul samples of their handiwork. These newsletters were sent not only to our regular subscribers, but also friends, colleagues and employers of the perpetrators, not one of whom was under the age of twenty- five.
The most obsessive, the author of the weekly cliff-hangers, was William Fletcher, an art teacher from Callander and author of the first 'Harrison Poe'. Stripped of his cloak of anonymity he first protested that he was, in fact, an ardent admirer of my and intended his work as a tribute. When this tactic failed, he resigned, attempted suicide and eventually left the area entirely to live with his sister. I often say that this is the Age of the Man-child: I might add that William Fletcher was one of its first prophets. A second Harrison Poe 'fanzine', incidentally, was run by his niece, Madeline Curran, a young woman who is still, apparently, not ashamed of the fact that her most significant achievement has been the construction of mischievously perverse images of myself.
*It's over twenty years since I first encountered Nina, although even then I remembered her from her previous career as an actress. Anybody who watched the first series of the 1970's detective series Dirty Secrets might remember her portrayal of Detective Katie Wilson. In the opening credits she pursues a large, bald headed miscreant, her face rigid with concentration and arms extended on either side, as if the expanse of pavement was a high wire. Every time I watch one of the show's very occasional reruns, I'm amazed by the folly by which Nina, a trust fund maintained flower-child, was cast as a streetwise cop. In retrospect, it's such an obvious blunder that it seems like an act of deliberate mischief perpetrated by one of her many personal enemies. Anybody else would have been humiliated, but Nina, apparently oblivious to the catastrophe of her performance, in her inevitable web-site attributes her replacement after a single series to political differences. Of course, the fact of being woefully miscast shouldn't necessarily entail the destruction of an actor's entire career. One might wonder why she never resurfaced in less significant roles more in keeping with her talents. Nina would have made a perfectly adequate barmaid or prostitute. As long as the part didn't require any depth of understanding, I'm sure it would have been within her capabilities. She possesses, after all, the essential thespian traits of insincerity and over-reaction. I should really have no compunction in relating the exact circumstances of how she managed to render herself unemployable. She's hardly exercised restraint in relating her version of my history. The fact is that her subsequent banishment from the television studios was unrelated to her relative absence of talent. I won't, however, stoop to dealing in gossip. This isn't the place to trot out Nina's various personal crises. All that need interest us is what qualifications she might possess to write about me.
Several years after the disintegration of her acting career, Nina visited my home in her new role as a researcher for the television series The People Who Saw Tomorrow. My mother, expecting a camera crew, prepared a buffet. Instead a solitary fat woman appeared. Nina, who had bloated considerably since her Detective Wilson period, was unsteady and slurred her words, she devoured most of the food with her fingers, failed to ask a single intelligent question and responded to my answers with snorts of disparagement. As the interview developed, I was bombarded by images of a basement lit by a single bulb and a red-headed girl with plaintive eyes and flared nostrils. When I mentioned this to Nina, she recoiled, excused herself and went to the bath-room where she remained for fifteen minutes. On returning, she crammed some sandwiches into her bag and fled. The next morning we woke to find her car still parked outside the house. Nina was curled shivering and clutching her stomach on the back-seat. Further investigation revealed that she had pilfered and devoured the contents of our medicine cabinet. We complained to the production-company. It's very poor etiquette to turn up at someone's house and attempt to commit suicide. We didn't even know the woman.
Naturally, we expected Nina's employers to dismiss her and send someone competent to the task of investigating my powers. Instead they produced not one, but four episodes of The People Who Saw Tomorrow in which I was portrayed by the late Samuel Nimmo, a malign looking dwarf with a metabolic disorder who attempted to convey an impression of psychic intuition by pointing at people and shrieking in a hideous falsetto. Nimmo, incidentally, has subsequently been arrested on numerous occasions for acts of gross depravity. Nina, meanwhile, wrote her first book on the subject of psychic detection, a volume in which charlatans and schizophrenics are glorified and I'm dismissed in the chapter Frauds, Sharks and Weirdoes as a “morbid Scottish adolescent who spends his time stealing underwear and sifting through his neighbours' rubbish.” This was a deliberate misinterpretation of incidents that occurred in the course of investigations. Phyllis Yuill's technique, in contrast, comprises entirely of throwing teabags at people, yet Nina, perhaps empathising with the plight of a fellow psychotic fat woman, afforded her an entire chapter, crediting her with the resolution of various cases including at least one that occurred in the realm of fiction. The fact that I had been extensively tested under laboratory conditions and had received laminated certificates of authenticity from research facilities and universities in London, Munich and Tampa Bay, Florida went unrecorded.
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