by Alf Townsend
SIX
OUR FINAL MOVE
This final move was akin to moving to another town. We had started off in the centre of Newquay by the harbour, then moved to the southernmost point. Now we were back on the northern edge. Everything was new to me – there were new beaches to discover, new cliffs to climb, an RAF aerodrome to check out and a boating pond behind the station by the old viaduct. There were still plenty of Yanks in town after the front-line troops had departed and the Great Western Hotel – just a stone’s throw away from our hotel Cliff Close – housed the American officers. I think it was every Thursday evening that they had a motion-picture show in the big ballroom that looked out on to the garden. So, I would arrive in their hotel garden every Thursday evening, find a gap in the heavy curtains that had been drawn across the opened French windows and enjoy a free film! Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in all their famous ‘Road’ movies. I saw them all, long before they were released in Britain. I did this Thursday ‘visit’ for many weeks and not once did any of the American officers rumble me. They just sat there in the dark puffing away at their ciggies and enjoying the film. Whether they even saw me in the dark is another matter. With hindsight, I suppose they were lucky I wasn’t a German spy with a suitcase full of grenades!
I remember once playing in the private gardens of the Great Western Hotel. God only knows how I got in there past the guards. Suddenly I tripped and fell on a great lump of jagged glass that pierced the flesh on the left side of my knee. I went down as if I had been pole-axed, screaming in agony, with blood splattering all over the place. The next thing I remembered was this wonderful smell in my nostrils. I looked up and saw a beautiful, blond-haired woman wearing an American officer’s uniform, smiling down at me with the most perfect teeth I had ever seen. ‘Let’s have a look and see what you’ve done to yourself honey,’ she said in soft, Southern drawl. ‘Oh, that’s not nice at all,’ she said, wiping the gaping wound, ‘I guess if you’re a brave enough soldier, I can stitch it up.’ I just lay there in absolute agony, looking up at this beautiful creature with the sweet smell and thinking, am I dead? Is she an angel? No way was I going to let this lovely lady think I was a coward, so I said in a wobbly, nervous voice ‘Do what you have to do, missus, I ain’t scared.’ I often wish on reflection that I’d kept my big mouth shut and waited for an ambulance, because what followed was so painful, it made me feel sick. Two other lady officers held me down while my ‘angel’ proceeded to sew me up like an old pin cushion. No painkillers, no ether, no anaesthetic. Just a needle and thread on skin and bone, with me wailing like a banshee! They bound the wound and lifted me up, even though I was a bit groggy. ‘Okay honey,’ she said. ‘You just scoot off back to your Ma and tell her you’ve been a very brave soldier.’ With that she gave me a soft kiss on the cheek and the other two lady officers gave me a cuddle and pressed some Hershey Bars into my sweaty little hands. Then, they were gone and I never saw them again. Many years later, at the pictures with my mates, I often used to sit in the dark and fantasise that the lovely blonde lady on screen wasn’t really Lauren Bacall, or even Betty Grable, but my American Cornish angel. Needless to say, when I arrived back home, nobody even noticed the bandage or my face. I was forever grazing myself and coming home wearing bandages and plasters. So what was new? If I can remember correctly, a couple of weeks later I pulled the stitches out myself!
On the subject of the Yanks still in town, I kept hearing people saying that the Yanks were: ‘Overpaid, over-sexed and over here.’ I didn’t really understand what it meant, but my cunning cockney brain started to see the possibility of a good earner when they started whistling after my eldest sister. By this time, she must have been about sixteen and was blossoming into a shapely and attractive young lady. But she was always lumbered with me if she wanted to go out, because our Mum used to say: ‘You stay with your bruvver, Joanie, and keep away from those bleedin’ randy Yanks.’ She certainly got plenty of wolf-whistles whenever we walked past them! They would shout out things like ‘Hello honey, you gonna keep me warm tonight?’ or, ‘D’ya wanna be my pin-up baby?’ Then she’d start chatting to them and shout across to me: ‘Don’t you dare tell Mum, Alfie, or I’ll belt you one.’
This was the start of my little earner. As time passed, she got very friendly with some of the Yanks. They would ask her to go for a walk with them, with me following behind of course! I distinctly remember the Yanks always loved to walk her to this quiet, nearby orchard. Then the guys used to say to me. ‘Here’s some candy and some gum buddy. Just you sit here on the wall and we’ll be back in a couple of minutes.’ What did I know what was going on? I was getting goodies for just sitting on a wall for a few minutes and if they wanted to pick some apples, so what!
I was always up the front when the Yanks were talking, sitting outside their hotels and often picked up on some of their chat. I didn’t have a clue who Ike, Uncle Joe or Monty were, but I joined in as though the names were familiar to me. Then they started talking about the likes of Truman and Dewey and about who was going to win the American election. ‘Hey kiddo,’ one of them said to me, with a big grin on his face. ‘Who ya gonna put your money on for the presidential election, Dewey or that other bum Truman?’ I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about but it was all about ingratiating myself for future goodies. I’d never heard, or seen, the name Dewey before, but I did remember the other name above some of the pubs, Truman’s Beers, or something like that? So, I tried to look as studious as possible before I finally answered. ‘I fink Truman will be the winner by a short ’ead.’ The Yanks started to fall about with hilarious laughter as though I had cracked a real funny joke. ‘Hey you dumb Limey son of a bitch,’ said one of them. ‘Don’t you know that Dewey is the red-hot favourite and we’ve all put our paychecks on his nose?’ Now I had the dead needle because he’d called me by that rude name and I wasn’t going to back down. ‘You can put your money on his nose or up his arse for all I care,’ I retorted angrily, amid screams of laughter from the other guys. ‘But Dewey ain’t gonna win, ’cos Truman is.’ These guys had already shipped out before the news filtered through that Harry S. Truman had indeed become the new President of the United States. I often wonder if those guys ever told the funny story on the battlefields of Europe about that ‘dumb Limey son of a bitch’, who correctly picked the rank outsider in the presidential election? I like to think so.
By this time, I had a new love and a new mate. My new love was collecting birds’ eggs with my new mate Donald Patience. I’ll never forget old Don, we were really good mates for many months and almost inseparable. After the war, I was invited up to his house in Finsbury Park, not far from where I lived, for Sunday dinner. But our friendship didn’t work out in London due to that dinner. I could never be real mates with someone whose mother was so posh that they had roast potatoes and boiled potatoes ALL on the same plate! It was so embarrassing for a yob like me! Don and I used to climb nearly every tree that had a nest and scour every cliff that had a bird population. I shudder when I think of what we got up to. The steepest cliffs in the area were called, appropriately enough, Baker’s Folly. Would you believe that I used to climb down the sheer cliffs from the top, holding on to a tatty old rope held by Don? The seagulls and other birds, who were nesting on the cliff face, were screaming and dive-bombing me while I raided their nests. Probably more by luck than judgement I never fell or slipped. Then it was back to base with our haul of eggs, stick a pin in both ends and blow out what was inside. It took us a while to realise that we needed to collect the eggs early on in the year – well before the chicks started to form inside. Then somehow, or from somewhere, don’t ask me where, I had managed to obtain a proper collector’s box to exhibit the eggs. This was my pride and joy for many long months. Lovely polished, shiny wood and a real brass lock. Lots of little sections inside all lined in a brown fur to put different-sized eggs in. The eggs were all lovingly wrapped up in cotton wool – with a glass front for all my friends to see. I
became quite an expert on the names of all the assorted eggs that we had managed to swipe!
When I finally left to return to London, I remember well my old Mum saying to me in no uncertain manner: ‘Alfie, you ain’t taking that bleedin’ great box of eggs ’ome with you. Get shot of it.’ I was heartbroken. That ‘bleedin’ great box’ represented months of hard work and scratched knees, torn fingers and many happy memories. But Mum was the guv’nor and I had to do her bidding. If my memory serves me right, I believe I swapped my complete precious collection for an air pistol that was supposed to fire real lead pellets – it didn’t work!
These were happy times for the family and me at Cliff Close. Again the sun always seemed to shine, I roamed the different beaches in the area from dawn ’til dusk and as for schooling, once again, I can’t remember too much of that. One of the most popular pastimes for Don and me, was, again, a very dangerous thing to do. We would wait for the tide to go fully out, then race across the different beaches and clamber over the rocks heading north to the airfield at St Columb Minor – or was it St Columb Major? Then we’d climb up the cliff that led to the airfield and peer through the fence at the planes. I never remembered seeing any guards, certainly nobody ever challenged us. Our return trip back to where we started was always a bit hairy because the tide was on the turn and starting to come in quite quickly. We’d clamber over rocks giggling like mad when a mighty wave soaked us. Then we’d make a mad dash for it across the sand before another wave came in. We nearly always made it back to our starting point at Towan Beach. All except for one particular time when we misjudged the tide and were forced to scale a huge cliff to safety because the sea had cut us off. I arrived back home that evening very late and bleeding from grazed knees and soaked to the skin. There was certainly no sympathy or concerns from my family about what had happened to me. I just got a clump around the ear and told to go upstairs and clean myself up!
Our Dad started to appear at weekends on a regular basis. Mum told us that he was helping to build an airfield in the area. I recall showing my Dad some of my haunts on the beach and once or twice we would go swimming together. I can distinctly remember his funny-looking swimming trunks made in a strange, shiny red material, cut very high at the front and done up with a belt of white plastic. I thought they were hilarious. Unfortunately, I never really had much affinity with my old Dad. I think he was a boozer and a bit of a bully. He’d served in the Far East in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry between the wars and still suffered terrible bouts of deep-seated malaria. Mixed with the regular booze, this could make him a very violent man. He was certainly the biggest bigot it has ever been my misfortune to meet in my lifetime. Every single black man he ever met he called ‘Johnny’, a derogatory term used in army slang. Quite often – especially when he’d had a drink – he would attempt to pass on his bigotry to me. ‘Oh yes, boy,’ he’d say. ‘Your Johnnies ain’t like us white people. Out in Egypt they live like bleedin’ animals.’ I recall his utter disgust when the Empire Windrush arrived in England in the early 1950s, full of families from the Caribbean. These people had forsaken their tropical paradise to answer the call for the lack of unskilled labour from Great Britain. Yet, bigots like my Dad, and there were plenty of them, held up their arms in total despair and said it was the end of England! Thankfully, they were proved wrong and we are now a thriving, multi-cultural nation.
My old Dad became a prison warder after leaving the army and actually served at the dreaded Pentonville Prison close to my Nan’s house. The story goes that he got the sack for being involved in a scam to get money and various other goodies in to the cons. The villains on the outside used to catch and kill pigeons. Then they’d cut open the birds, scrape out their innards, put the ‘gear’ inside, then sew them up again. During the night they would toss the birds over the prison walls at the appropriate location. My Dad was accused of being involved by picking up the pigeons that contained the gear. He naïvely pleaded his innocence, saying he just picked up the dead birds because felt sorry for them. But they sacked him anyway, though they didn’t nick him! If ever I upset him, which was often, off would come his big, thick leather belt and he’d whack me all round the room with it. But things change with the passing of time and parents need to understand that their kids can appear to become adults almost overnight! He tried his leather-belt bullying once too often when I was a strapping fifteen-year-old back in London. I grabbed his wrist as he took off his leather belt and said quietly: ‘No more Dad, that’s the finish of it, I’m not a kid anymore.’ I saw the look in his eyes, his anger turned to embarrassment, then almost to sadness. The realisation suddenly dawned on him that the years had rolled by and I was reaching manhood. Strangely enough, I felt sorry for him, it was the end of an era.
Once again I got into trouble on one of my Dad’s visits. I was too young to comprehend the significance of the creaking bed springs from my parents’ room. And when I told my big sister what I’d heard and asked her innocently what it was all about, she clumped me around the ear and said she was telling Mum that I was being ‘dirty’. It took me many years to work out why I’d got a clump around the ear!
As time went by, it was noticeable, even to a kid like me, that my parents and all our neighbours and the people in town were smiling a lot more. One fine summer’s day, Don and I decided to walk into town via the cliff path and Towan Beach. Every postcard I’ve ever seen of Newquay depicts the island off Towan Beach. I learned recently the posh house on the island was owned by an ex-politician called Lord Long and that he was selling it. So, if ever they make this book into a film, I think I’ll buy it! Anyway, as we walked across the spacious grass lawn that leads to the town, we couldn’t help but notice the deep trenches that had been dug facing out to sea. They were obviously constructed to counter any Nazi invasion. However, a quick peek down into the trenches showed evidence, not of Germans, but of Yanks having been ultra-‘friendly’ with the young female population of Newquay!
Suddenly we heard the sound of a brass band so we made a bee-line towards the music. It was a real parade, marching through town with lots of people clapping and cheering. I loved the sound of the brass band and the tuba going ‘oom-pah, oom-pah,oom-pah’. I had to chuckle when I saw all these blokes in funny outfits with little bells on their trousers, waving what looked like girls’ scarves and dancing to the marching band. I thought they looked like a bunch of pansies. People were all laughing, clapping, skipping and hopping. We discovered later that this was an annual event called the Cornish Floral Dance, and it had been going on for many centuries. Don and me joined in the parade and started hopping to the sound of the band and waving our hankies about like the other pansies. It was all a big giggle but the whole atmosphere of people being happy, clearly indicated that the war was going our way. In fact, by then the Allies had already pushed on and liberated Paris.
It was a massive surprise to me, and a great disappointment, when my best mate Don told me that he was going back to London. I think Don was a bit older than me and much more studious and a bit posh. ‘My Dad says Jerry’s on the run,’ he said to me one day. ‘So it will be safe for us to go back to London.’ ‘Listen Don, you don’t wanna go back to London,’ I said, really believing I could dissuade him. ‘I’ll have a word with my Mum and you can stay with us.’ He smiled at me, ruffled my hair in a matey fashion and said: ‘You’re a lad, Alfie. You’re really quite dopey at times. How on earth can I stay with you and your Mum and leave my own family?’ So, that was the end of a great friendship and the beginning of the end of my stay in Cornwall.
Things were never quite the same after Don left. For sure, I had lots of mates but none of them were like Don. We still roamed the beaches and the cliffs and we still got in trouble with the law for scrumping apples. In fact, I was fined £1 in the local magistrates court for scrumping and given a belting by my Dad. Some twenty years later, when I had to list my convictions to be accepted onto the Knowledge of London test, I inadvertently forgot this f
ine. Not so the Public Carriage, the ruling body of London’s licensed taxi trade. The conviction was still on my file and I got a right rollicking for not declaring it!
The Yanks were still in town and my big sister’s latest boyfriend was billeted in the hotel just across the lane from us. Every night she would stand swooning at her bedroom window while he played the same songs on his record player. One was called, ‘Amour Amour, Amour’, all soppy and lovey-dovey. The other one had a Latin American title that went on about ‘If you go, if you leave me alone, each little kiss will be mine and my life will be gone, Bess-sam-e-mucho, kiss me my darling and tell me you’ll always be mine’. Or something like that! The third record was a very popular comic tune at the time entitled or so I thought, ‘Mairzy Dotes and Dozey Dotes’. For years I used to sing the song thinking the words were: ‘Mairzy dotes and dozey dotes and little lambsy-divey, tittly-tattly too, wouldn’t you?’ It was only very recently my dear wife informed me that the words were actually: ‘Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, kids’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?’ I’m slow but I get there in the end!
I didn’t go a lot on my sister’s boyfriend when one fine day we just happened to bump into him by accident. I was still her minder, you’ll notice. For sure, he was dark and handsome – as my sister had told me a million times. He looked the business in his smart uniform with the stripes on his arm. Mind you, every Yank I ever saw had at least one stripe on his arm. Did they get a stripe just for going to England? This guy, I think his name was Raef, looked for all the world like a Mexican bandit. He was positively swarthy and had grown this ridiculous moustache that drooped down either side of his pie-hole, making him appear almost mournful! He kept touching my sister and calling her ‘Conchita’. No, I didn’t rate him at all, and told my sister she could do better than a Mexican bandit!