Blitz Boy

by Alf Townsend

  All of my London mates seemed to be going back and one day, sure enough, our Mum announced with a beaming smile on her face. ‘We’ve found a place to live in London, Alfie, and we’re going ’ome next week.’ I wasn’t too pleased with this news because I now liked the life in Cornwall. I reckoned I was more Cornish than a Londoner and I didn’t want to go back to that dirty old place ‘Well,’ I said to Mum, ‘you can go back, but I ain’t.’ I got a clump around the ear for that remark and when she told my Dad at the weekend what I had said, he gave me a good hiding.

  We packed our battered old suitcases for the last time and I went out into the garden and said a tearful goodbye to my two lovely dogs who were buried there. Patch was my companion and my bedmate for ages and when he died I never thought I could love another dog. Then I was given Sheba and I grew to love her even more. Now I had to leave them. I felt very sad. We’d had some great times, all of us playing out in the huge garden. One of our favourite games, I recall, was sliding down the big grass verge towards the lane that before the war used to be a tram-track. I well remember that day when this posh boy turned up and joined in our game. I had spoken to him once before on the beach and he’d told me that his father owned the jeweller’s shop just up the road opposite the station. Anyway, after a while he picked up his parcel and said he’d have to go because he was delivering some stuff for his Dad. A while after he’d left I was chasing my dog around the garden and I came across this parcel by the grass verge. I picked it up and took it inside to show my Mum. My two sisters crowded round while Mum cut the string and opened the box. ‘Oh my,’ gasped Mum, as she looked into the box, ‘I fink you’ve found the bleedin’ crown jewels, Alfie’. My two sisters pushed forward to have a look into the box shoving me out of the way. ‘Gor’ blimey Mum’, they chorused. ‘We’re gonna be rich.’ ‘Wot’s going on?’ I said, pushing myself to the front for a good look inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The box was packed full of diamond rings, necklaces and gold bangles, just like a treasure chest in the old pirate films. My two sisters were jumping up and down and screaming out in great excitement. ‘Let’s flog it all and buy our own house in London.’ But I had tumbled straight away who the ‘treasure chest’ really belonged to, so I said to them. ‘Naw, you can’t do that, we’ll all get nicked. This belongs to the posh bloke who’s just been playing with us. Anyway, I’d better take it back before his Dad calls out the coppers.’ So, I walked up the road to the jeweller’s shop clutching my precious parcel. And, would you believe all I got from the boy’s father was a ‘Thank you very much’ and the threat to belt his son when he returned!

  Needless to say, when my old Dad came back at the weekend, he went barmy after being told the story. ‘You ain’t got no savvy at all, have ya?’ he snarled at me in a raging anger. ‘We could have cashed in on your find and got ourselves out of this bleedin’ dump.’ He was muttering and swearing to himself and still he went on and on. ‘All we had to say was we didn’t find nuffing, then when there was a reward offered, we’d find it. But no, not you’, he whined, ‘forever the bloody Honest John and we finished up with sod all, didn’t we?’ I don’t think my old Dad ever forgave me for doing what I thought was the natural thing to do. Even the poorest of kids are basically honest, until they’re taught otherwise!

  Now the time had come to leave. I trudged despondently away from the Cliff Close Hotel, dragging my battered old suitcase and followed my family up the road a couple of hundred yards to the station. I had roamed the countryside and the beaches as a free spirit for months. Now I was returning to a place that I didn’t know and a place that evoked bad memories from my earliest childhood. No wonder I was feeling grumpy. I stared out of the window as the train pulled out of Newquay and chugged slowly over the viaduct. I could see the tennis courts and the boating lake below; I remembered all the great times I’d had there, especially on a cold winter’s day with thick snow on the ground when Don and I had a great time on the tennis courts throwing snowballs. The train picked up speed, the white mountains flashed by in the blink of an eye and, suddenly, my childhood was behind me and I was heading for a new life in London and manhood. But, would I be happy and would smelly old London ever take the place of lovely, scenic Cornwall? We shall see.

  SEVEN

  RETURN TO WAR-TORN LONDON

  Stepping off the train at Paddington station was a bit of a weird sensation for me. It felt like I was leaving a time capsule, that the four and a half years or so that I’d been away had never really happened. Could it all have been just a figment of my boyhood imagination?

  Back to war-torn Islington. (Islington Libraries)

  Brecknock Road battered. (Islington Libraries)

  Nothing had changed much since that frightening day all that time ago, except for the rows of bomb-torn houses that I noticed as we steamed through West London. As we got nearer Central London, the bomb-damage got even worse and some areas looked like a flattened wasteland. On arrival, the station still echoed to the sound and smell of the locomotives blowing their steam boilers – there were still hundreds of people flocking around, most of them in uniform. I picked out the many brown belts of the army officers, the white-blancoed belts of the RAF boys and the sailors in their bell-bottom trousers. Only this time around it was different for me. I had returned as a big strapping lad of nearly ten years old with a healthy complexion after years spent in the country air. No longer were the different coloured belts the height of my focus. I could now clearly see their top buttons and even their epaulettes!

  Then it was down the Tube and a noisy, clanking journey to what used to be our regular sleeping station. The old nightmares got to me when we alighted at Caledonian Road. The platform was dim and almost deserted. The smells were still the same and I could still vividly visualise the rickety old double bunks and the hundreds of men, women and children sitting there with fear in their eyes as the sirens wailed and the dull thud as the bombs hit the ground. I wondered how many of them had survived the terrible pounding they had endured.

  Pentonville Prison – probably minus a few cons. (Islington Libraries)

  The once-familiar walk down Roman Way, past Pentonville Prison to my Nan’s house in Offord Road, wasn’t familiar to me any more. I didn’t recognise anything except the prison walls on the right. My young eyes, now accustomed to clear, marvellous scenic views of the countryside and the beaches couldn’t comprehend the scenes of utter devastation they witnessed. Whole streets had been razed to the ground, with just the odd wobbly wall or two standing upright – almost like mournful monuments to those poor innocent souls who had perished under the hail of German bombs. There was rubble everywhere; a strong acrid smell of burning wood permeated the air. Mum quickened her step and we all knew she was worrying about her parents. As we turned left into Offord Road, however, we saw that our Nan’s side of the road was basically intact, yet the other side had been blasted to the ground. Living through the Blitz must have been the most terrible and frightening lottery to endure. If you were lucky, the next street copped the bombs and your neighbours were either killed, maimed or bombed out and you survived for another day. If you were one of the many unlucky ones, then mercifully you didn’t know too much about it in the end. We cockneys have a wonderful saying that covers that scenario almost to perfection: ‘If your card is marked …’. I believe it comes from racing slang.

  Home again to a strange London. (Islington Libraries)

  Nan, Grandad and a couple of my aunts came out to greet us with lots of hugs and kisses. My Nan Rosie was a real character, a cockney through and through and tough as old boots. A big lady with a big face, she always wore a flowery apron and always kept her fags in the front pocket. She must have been a tough old bird, because many years later I discovered that every time she gave birth, one of her legs had to be broken; she bore eight children! My Mum, Rosie, was the eldest, but as I mentioned earlier, she was a ‘lovechild’. The other three girls were Rene, Queenie and Edie. The four boys were Alfie, who
was killed in the Desert War; Billy, who died soon after the war from cancer, then Harry and Lenny. My old Grandad Bill was also a right character. He was the exact opposite to my Nan, small and wiry, with piercing blue eyes and a bit of grey curly hair on the sides of his head, augmented by an imposing, grey walrus moustache. He also had a gammy leg – I think it was a legacy from the First World War. But, like most other cockneys, he never moaned and just got on with it. He’d worked all his life as a porter down at the old Covent Garden market, as did his sons after the war. And when he became too old and frail for humping all those boxes of fruit and veg around, they found him a job as a part-time cart-minder right opposite the old Floral Hall in Bow Street, now part of the newly refurbished Royal Opera House. Later on, I clearly remember jumping on one of the old trams at the Angel and popping down the Garden to see my uncles and my old Grandad. As usual, I was on the cadge for a couple of apples or oranges, or anything that was going for that matter! But I did enjoy talking to my Grandad and stroking the old horses in his care. He was such a gentleman, he never raised his voice in anger. I think he earned his wages with tips from the buyers and cart-owners. In all honesty, it was one of the many made-up jobs by the closed-shop union to help out the old boys. The market unions and the porters always looked after their own in those days.

  Left to right: Mum, Nan and Auntie Queenie. (Joan Westmore’s collection)

  Uncle Harry (centre) was a Desert Rat in Egypt. (Joan Westmore’s collection)

  Grandad’s last journey. (Joan Westmore’s collection)

  I was getting plenty of hugs and kisses from my aunts, especially from my favourite, Auntie Queenie. Her full ‘title’ was actually Queenie-Minny-Liza-Ellen. I suppose in today’s parlance she would be called a bit of an old slapper, or even a good-time girl. But I thought she was gorgeous with her dyed, permed, curly blond hair, the black mascara on her eyes, the white make-up and the vivid red slash of lipstick across her mouth. I recall once reading a very funny description of the late Dame Barbara Cartland’s make-up by some feature writer. I think she said that her eyes resembled ‘two large blackbirds nesting on the white cliffs of Dover’. That was my Auntie Queenie down to a tee. She reeked of cheap perfume and whenever she went out, she always, but always had the dead foxfur around her neck with the beady little glass eyes staring at you!

  ‘’Ave a look at the bleedin’ size of him, Mum,’ said my Auntie Queenie to our Nan, while cuddling me into her ample bosom. ‘I reckon our Alfie will be taking me down the Offord Arms very soon for a large port and lemon.’ This brought roars of laughter from my Nan and Grandad and aunts before my Auntie Edie, who lived upstairs in Nan’s house and had a stutter, said: ‘L-l-leave ’im alone, Queenie, you’re m-m-making ’im bl-bl-bleedin’ blush.’

  It seemed like forever that we lived with our Nan and Grandad before the house we were promised was ready. But it was great fun because they certainly knew how to have a good time. All us kids used to stand outside the local pubs most of the evening, while our relatives were boozing away inside. Every so often, one of them would appear with some lemonade or a bag of crisps to keep us happy until chucking-out time. When the grown-ups came out of the pub, you always knew when it was party time and time for a knees-up, because the men would all come out loaded up with crates of beer. They were joined together – almost like a daisy chain and spread across the road – all laughing and joking and puffing away on their fags. I distinctly recall it was a dozen bottled half pints in the big wooden crates and four big quart bottles in the little square crates. And, if you were ever invited to help carry the crates, that meant you were close to becoming a man and nearing the ‘inner circle’!

  Then it was back to our Nan’s and someone used to start playing the old piano. Funny that, they didn’t have two halfpennies to rub together, but they still had an old Joanna. Somebody else would get out the silly hats from some hidden place and start singing and playing party games. The hats were something else: sombreros, fezzes from Egypt and Australian bush hats, probably brought home by the returning soldiers. The silly games were taken really seriously, the ladies on one team and the men on the other. Two big beer mugs were placed at the end of the room and the contestants had to place a large coin in their buttocks. The object of the game was to hop the length of the room, then drop the coin into the beer mug. If you dropped it, you had to start again before the next player could begin. Obviously with everyone a bit sloshed the game went on and on until the contestants collapsed with laughter and exhaustion! One of the next-door neighbours had a regular party game that he always performed at every knees-up and it would bring the house down. Believe me, all he did was to tie a piece of string around the carcass of a chicken, or some other dead beast, and pull it around the parlour, scolding it and talking to it like a dog. So, if ever I heard the shout of ‘Charlie, innit abaht time that bleedin’ old dog of yours had its evening walkabaht?’ I would scarper upstairs and lie on the bed with the pillow over my ears to shut out the sound. It was quite funny the first time around, but once you’d seen it and heard it half a dozen times, it wasn’t funny anymore. It was only much later that I found out that Charlie had lost his wife and kids in an air raid and playing silly-buggers helped to keep him sane. I was told when the war was nearly over that poor old Charlie had finally joined his loved ones when he copped it with the very last doodlebug to fall on London. Somehow I don’t think dear old Charlie would have minded in the least.

  Devastation just around the corner from us. (Islington Libraries)

  Kings Cross took a battering. (Islington Libraries)

  Although the war was still going on and every now and again we would hear a distant explosion as Hitler’s new terror weapon, the V2 rocket, came down upon some poor souls, us kids still roamed the streets in the daylight hours. A nice little earner for me and my mates was to cadge a bucket and shovel off my Nan and collect the horse droppings in the surrounding roads. The streets around Offord Road weren’t short of horse droppings, because it was a well-used route from the Kings Cross goods depot through to the City. Then we’d flog the manure to one of the big posh houses with a garden and there were plenty of them. Our ‘manor’, Islington, was a strange sort of area during the war. Most of it was made up of poor, working-class families and many of the big, posh houses had seen better days. But it was obvious that between the wars it had been an affluent place to live. Sir Basil Spence, the famous architect of the new Coventry Cathedral, was probably the first to make Islington trendy during the 1950s when he settled in Canonbury Square. Tony Blair and his family arrived in the same square much later. A few years after the war ended, the house prices in the area shot through the roof, especially when the professional people realised the potential of its close proximity to the City. The large house where my mate and his family lived in Belitha Villas was offered to his dad after the war for about two grand. But ordinary working people couldn’t get mortgages on their meagre wages in those days and he had to turn down the offer. Some time later, living as sitting tenants, they were offered a brand new rented flat if they would move out. Their old house was then converted into four flats and each flat fetched more than £100,000 on the spiralling property market. Even our old dilapidated house where we moved to in Twyford Street became worth a lot of money, considerably more than the £400 my old Dad could have picked it up for after the war. But £400 then was the equivalent of around £40,000 today. A lot of people were making an awful lot of dough by refurbishing and flogging old properties.

  The Archway after the Blitz. (Islington Libraries)

  Clearing up the Archway. (Islington Libraries)

  Destruction in Islington caused by V1s and V2s. (Islington Libraries)

  Finsbury Park was hit hard. (Islington Libraries)

  Another Islington pub bites the dust. (Islington Libraries)

  But messing about on the roads with a bucket and shovel was a dangerous game, even in those times with very few cars about. One day I was knocked over by a car, j
ust around the corner from my Nan’s house. The driver was a really nice guy and drove me home because he was genuinely concerned. But he was bang out of luck because my old Dad opened the door and when he heard the story from the driver, you could see the sight of pound notes in his eyes. ‘Well, guv,’ said my Dad, ‘I’ll need to take your details and get my boy checked out right away down the doctor’s.’ The driver, a real toff, was shifting around in an uncomfortable way from one leg to the other. Who knows, maybe he had been visiting a lady friend on the quiet or something, but he was certainly nervous and jumpy. ‘My dear chap,’ he muttered, reaching into his inside pocket and pulling out a big, fat wallet. He opened it up to reveal a large wad of white fivers. ‘Maybe we can settle this without involving the police. After all, it was only a minor incident.’ ‘I don’t know about that, guv,’ said my Dad. ‘Wot if my boy’s got brain damage?’ The toff let out a big sigh and a look of annoyance came into his eyes as he said testily, ‘I would think it highly unlikely your son was suffering brain damage, seeing as how my car only hit his leg.’ But my old Dad was adamant, he was a cunning old dog and he knew that if the toff was offering dough he had something to hide, and Dad wasn’t going to be bought off with a couple of fivers. ‘Just give me your details guv and I’ll pretend I didn’t see you trying to bribe me,’ he said. The toff knew he had met his match against an old, streetwise geezer on the make. He gave my Dad his business card and walked off in a huff. So I was dragged down the local doctor’s the next day and told what to say. ‘I keep getting these blinding headaches with terrible pains in the neck ever since my terrible accident and I can’t sleep at night!’