“These were scary times; there had been some newspaper reports about the effects of the bombs on the men. I was walking home one day and some of my former classmates were sitting on a wall sniggering. When I asked what was up, they showed me a newspaper article about Christmas Island.
“I didn’t read it all, but they were saying things about babies and that how soldiers wouldn’t be able to have any. I walked off in tears. The thought of never having babies filled me with dread. Kenny must have sensed the change in me from my letters, and his replies became more and more desperate.
“I wrote back to reassure him that I still loved him. I knew I’d made the right decision as soon as he stepped off the train. My heart just melted when I saw his condition and I knew then that I could never love another man no matter what, even if he wasn’t quite the same man I had known before he went away.
“His personality had changed in subtle ways. He was quieter, more thoughtful; he looked as though he always had things on his mind. He was only 21 years old, but he acted as though he was much older. He was also very insecure. He kept asking me if I had been seeing someone else while he was away. I told him that was rubbish.
“But there was something going on inside him that I couldn’t understand. From being very gentle, he was suddenly very hot tempered. I could usually calm him down, but one day he just exploded after went for religious instruction. I had decided to become a Catholic in preparation for our marriage. On the way home on the bus this guy was looking at me funny and Kenny got mad and thumped him. He had never been like that before. I thought he had really hurt this guy. I managed to drag him away. I grabbed him fiercely to make him see sense. His eyes cleared, and then he burst into tears. It was bewildering.
“Kenny said he needed a job and started work in a paper-mill factory, but he found it impossible to settle down. He resented authority and couldn’t stand being confined. He was like a pressure cooker, and one day he blew. Some guy was giving him a lot of chat at work and Kenny hurled himself across the room and had him by the throat before he could blink. There was a near riot, and Kenny lost his job.
“He was lucky not to be prosecuted. I thought he could get into serious trouble if something wasn’t done. Finally I told him that if he didn’t stop we were finished. That calmed him down. In those days there was no help for people like Kenny and we just sort of struggled on. We coped. He grew calmer; the storm subsided; the demons went away.
“We had no money but we decided to go ahead and get married anyway, and Kenny seemed happy as we made all the preparations. I made my own outfit and everyone pitched in to help.
“The ceremony at St Margaret’s Catholic Church in Johnstone took place on April 23, 1960 and the church was packed. To keep both sides of the family happy we held the reception in the Orange Hall.
“We moved in with Kenny’s mother who lived in a large house in Brewery Street, Johnstone. It was a chaotic arrangement as two of his brothers had also moved in with their wives, but it suited Kenny down to the ground. He was still suffering quite a lot from nervous anxiety, which today is called post traumatic stress disorder, and it helped to be with his family. By the time we’d saved enough for our own place, Kenny seemed to have recovered completely.
“As our financial situation improved we decided it was time to start a family. At least that was the plan, but nothing seemed to be happening. I thought there must be something wrong with me so I went to the doctor who carried out some tests. We were so desperate for children that Kenny also went to the hospital for some tests, although he was sure the problem wasn’t with him.
“Imagine my shock when the doctor called us back in together to say: ‘Mrs McGinley, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, and you can go away and have as many babies as you wish◦— the only problem is you will have to have them with someone else because I am afraid your husband will never be able to father children. His sperm count is too low.’
“Thinking about it now, it was an unbelievable callous thing to say, but at the time we were both too shocked to speak. We wanted so much to have children; it was all I had ever wanted. When we recovered from the shock we demanded to know how this could be so when both our families had lots of children. The doctor just shrugged his shoulders, but then he said a very strange thing to my husband: ‘You’ll rue the day you stepped foot on Christmas Island.’
“At first I didn’t understand, then I remembered those newspaper articles and, I knew. It was so heartbreaking; I was in this terrible position of desperately wanting my own child, yet I couldn’t because I knew that Kenny was the only man I could ever love.
“I blamed Christmas Island then, and I blame it now. I blamed it because of the way Kenny had changed and for what the doctor had told me. I loved this man, but we couldn’t have children together. They took that away from me. I was never going to have kids.
“In the end we went down the adoption route and we got our lovely daughter Louise. I have never regretted that for one minute. She is a beautiful girl and adopting her was the best thing we ever did. But it still rankles that the opportunity to have children of our own was taken away from us.”
Somehow Ken and Alice staggered on through the lean years. Business had all but dried up and selling up had become an inevitability. They knew this would, in many ways, be a relief.
“Increasingly both had become aware that they seemed to be under surveillance: strange cars occupied by shadowy figures appeared outside their home and parked for hours with no obvious intent. Post arrived that had obviously been interfered with; strange noises interrupted their telephone conversations; their home was burgled and confidential papers stolen.
“There were other alarming events that shredded already frayed nerves, like the time McGinley received a summons to attend court on a serious assault charge. He had never been arrested for anything and, much disturbed, took the matter up with the Procurator Fiscal’s office where he was told it had all been a mistake.
“Further inquiries revealed that a local firm of solicitors had mistakenly used McGinley’s name and address on the charge form. But why, McGinley wanted to know, did the solicitors have his name and address in the first place? The solicitors were evasive, but later admitted they had been commissioned to collect press cuttings concerning McGinley and send them on to “an interested party.” The lawyers refused to say who their client was.
Another frustrating problem arose when McGinley’s small war pension, awarded for his continuing stomach problems, was summarily withdrawn. He appealed against the decision and during a disclosure hearing McGinley learned that a doctor working for the Pensions Department, who had never examined McGinley, had written across his notes: “Politically sensitive case. This paranoid appellant is the president of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association.”
McGinley was outraged and naturally kicked up a fuss; his pension was eventually reinstated. The sensation of being under siege reached a head when the British Security Services came knocking on his door.
There were two of them, both male. One was a middle-aged executive type; the other looked to be in his late twenties. They had rung ahead to request an appointment and arrived promptly at the chosen time.
McGinley invited them in and examined their identity cards curiously while his wife made coffee. On the table in front of them was a week-old copy of a newspaper dominated by a picture of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man accused of the Lockerbie bombing.
He had recently been indicted by the US Attorney General and the Scottish Lord Advocate for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish border town of Lockerbie killing 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 people on the ground.