She rushed outside. ‘Stop it! You mustn’t hit him!’ she cried, scooping Paddy up in her arms and cuddling him.
‘It needs to be taught obedience,’ her granddad replied crossly. ‘It’s not hurt. But you have to show it who is master.’
Nevertheless, Mary vowed that he would never hit Paddy again. She was aware, though, that the dog was somewhat out of control, scaring her younger sisters as well as irritating her grandparents and aunts. Plus, it was another mouth to feed during a time of rationing and hardship. So, after talking it over with her sisters and a lot of heartache, Mary decided to give Paddy away. She found him a good home nearby with one of the other evacuee mums from Bermondsey, Mrs Arnold. The girls saw him being walked from time to time and thought he looked just like Lassie, the canine star of the feel-good family movies … and now that he was no longer in their care, was just as well behaved!
As well as her work at the laundry, Mary had another distraction which helped to take her mind off the loss of Annie. Her assistant, Iris, had got her interested in dancing and they would go to Polegate or nearby Magham Down several times a week. With a dearth of eligible young British men on home shores, the Canadian soldiers in Hailsham, along with a smattering of Americans nearby, were very popular at local dance nights.
The girls would don their best dresses, and the dressmaking skills that Mary had learnt at Koupy Gowns were put to good use as she made her own outfits at a fraction of the price they cost to buy. As was the fashion, Mary and Iris would apply ‘liquid stockings’ and then draw a line up the back of each other’s legs with an eyeliner pencil to replicate the stocking seam.
At the dance nights, a small band played tunes to suit a variety of popular dances, from the waltz to the foxtrot and the jitterbug, and included such favourites as ‘Apple Blossom Time’, ‘Melancholy Baby’ and ‘You Are My Sunshine’. The men would gather at one end of the hall and the women at the other, waiting to be formally asked for a dance.
On one occasion, a tall Canadian soldier approached Mary and smiled. ‘You’re the girl who brought our laundry,’ he remarked. ‘I’m Leslie. Would you care to dance?’
He was tanned, with a soothing voice and a ready smile, and Mary greatly enjoyed his company that evening. He became one of her regular dancing partners – the two young people looked out for one another every week and gravitated towards each other happily. Mary liked this feeling of having a man to care for her, and although she never had any real romantic attachment to him, Leslie’s attention felt reassuring and protective.
At the end of one evening, a few weeks after they had first met, he asked her whether she fancied going to tea with him in Eastbourne that Sunday. After a moment’s pause – after all, a proper date where they’d be alone was a very different proposition to dancing in public – Mary agreed. She liked him. It was flattering to be asked. How could she not go? However, when she told Pierce about the invitation he wasn’t at all happy about a soldier calling for her. Soldiers didn’t enjoy a good name.
‘We can’t have soldiers knocking at the house,’ he said. ‘It’ll give you a bad reputation. And what will the neighbours think?’
He didn’t say she couldn’t go, though, and the neighbours didn’t have to know. So the next time she called at the Canadians’ camp on her laundry round, she asked a familiar face there to pass on the message to Leslie that she would meet him at the café in Eastbourne at one o’clock that coming Sunday.
On the day, an unusually anxious Mary wondered whether Leslie had got the message and whether he would actually be there. Or perhaps he had forgotten about it? She voiced her concerns to her father, who she found in the front room, seated in the armchair, reading his newspaper. The headline screamed that America had declared war after Japanese planes had attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, killing over 2,400 Americans in the process.
‘Shouldn’t be long now,’ he said.
‘Who shouldn’t?’ Mary asked, her mind on Leslie.
‘The war. Shouldn’t go on much longer now. We’ve got the Yanks on our side.’ He folded his newspaper with a sense of satisfaction. ‘About bloody time,’ he muttered.
Mary stood watching him, clearly nervous.
‘Want me to come with you?’ he asked.
Mary grimaced. ‘I’m not a little girl,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Why don’t we get the bus together and if you see him outside the tea shop, then you can go off alone,’ said Pierce. ‘But if he doesn’t turn up, then we can come back together.’
Mary smiled. ‘Yeah. Thanks, Dad,’ she said.
To her relief, when they arrived in Eastbourne and started walking down the High Street, Mary spotted Leslie in the distance, outside the café.
‘That’s him,’ she said to her father excitedly, and quickly kissed him goodbye.
‘Don’t run!’ he called after her. ‘It’s not seemly.’
Mary slowed down and Pierce watched her for a moment longer before turning and making his way back to the bus stop. His girls were growing up fast, he thought to himself. He was trying his best as a parent but he was only with them at the weekends, and there was only so much he could do with the time he had.
Once again, his thoughts turned to Annie. He could never be their mother, he knew that. Annie had always seemed to know exactly what to say or do. He knew he’d done the right thing today, though, and felt pleased with himself.
Indeed, Mary did feel very grown up, sipping from china crockery in the tea shop, seated opposite her date at a small table draped in white linen. Leslie ordered cakes for them, which Mary thought very extravagant, but she did her best to be nonchalant and sophisticated. Casting an eye around the room, she saw other, older couples in quiet conversation and although she felt a little out of place in such fine surroundings, she was definitely enjoying the experience. She might not have been particularly attracted to Leslie, but he had good manners and was extremely attentive, with a nice line in flattery. He made her feel good.
Thanks to her mischievous sisters, things didn’t go quite so well as he accompanied her back to Battle Road. As they were walking along the pavement, Mary had noticed Joan and Anne walking a little distance behind them on the other side of the street. Feeling mischievous, Joan crossed the road with Anne and stepped up the pace so that soon they were right behind Mary and Leslie. She bent down and whispered something in Anne’s ear. Two-year-old Anne looked puzzled but, doing as Joan asked, ran up to Mary, tugged her on the arm and said in a loud voice, ‘What have we got for tea, Mum?’
Leslie looked shocked. Mary, her face flushing, turned to see a laughing Joan. She then looked back at Leslie. ‘It’s not what you think!’ she burst out. She explained hurriedly that her sisters were playing a prank on her and was relieved when Leslie laughed too.
One evening a week, Mary and Iris were part of the local fire-watch. They teamed up at Hailsham Senior Mixed School with two men – one in his sixties who was too old to join the armed forces and the other, at sixteen, too young. There, they would sit in a disused classroom, where there were some camp beds for them to sleep on, and whenever the air-raid siren sounded they would go up to the roof and watch for any incendiary bombs being dropped. Their job would then be to raise the alarm and to help extinguish the fire.
One night, Mary was in such a deep sleep that she didn’t hear the air-raid siren sound and the others, deciding not to rouse her, made their way to the roof. However, shortly after being left alone, Mary was startled out of her sleep by a scuttling noise nearby. It was a moment or two before she was awake enough to realize that she’d been left on her own, and that the noise must be a mouse. Deciding that bombs were far less scary than a small rodent, she shot out of bed to join the others on the roof.
Despite its various perils, Mary enjoyed the job, and the extra money it brought in – 3 shillings a shift – paid for her to go to the pictures at the local cinema the following night, which she considered to be a luxury. It
was something she looked forward to eagerly and her usual companion on such trips was another Bermondsey evacuee, Nellie Wallace. The pair would go all misty-eyed when their favourite film stars were on screen. Errol Flynn was always popular but, in Mary’s eyes, Tyrone Power was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
One evening, the pair of them had gone to the cinema to watch The Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson. They were so spooked by the story about the legend of the supernatural hound stalking the moorland at night, that when they came out into the darkness they were too terrified to walk home alone.
‘I don’t fancy it at all, do you?’ Mary asked her friend nervously. Nellie shook her head. Then, Mary looked over to see a man, who she half recognized, coming out of the cinema. She knew that he lived quite near her house.
‘Wait here a moment,’ she said to Nellie. She approached the man, turning on the charm that she used to great effect at the dances, by admitting that she and Nellie had both been scared witless by the film and asked if he would mind accompanying them home. He was happy to do so, amused by their plight, and walked them safely to their front doors.
Mary felt a little foolish afterwards. After all, they were in the middle of a war, with the real-life horror of death and bloodshed, yet here she was, in Hailsham, afraid of a movie about a hound! She wondered what her mother would have thought of her.
Mary and Leslie continued to see each other on a casual basis for a couple of months before drifting apart. It had been fun, and Mary had done a lot of growing up, but it would be another Canadian soldier who would steal her attention at the dance hall and get well and truly under her skin. Meeting him was to change her life.
CHAPTER 6
Christmas Tear
Anne (centre) is flanked by Kath (left), and Pat. Feeling pretty in the dresses Mary made for them.
IN THE RUN-UP to Christmas, back in Bermondsey, Annie would always take her daughters ‘down The Blue’, the term that locals used for Southwark Park Road, named after the Blue Anchor public house. The road was lined with shops and market stalls which stayed open till late; the pick ’n’ mix sweet counter at Woolworths drew young children like iron filings to a magnet and the stalls outside sold a variety of goods, including linen, fruit and veg, and clothes. The children’s hearts would thump with excitement as people bustled about, preparing for the upcoming celebrations, but the festive period always brought extra financial stress for Pierce and Annie.
The older girls, Mary in particular, were acutely aware that money was, in fact, in short supply all year round. One of Mary’s jobs was the weekly visit to the pawnbroker, which she hated. Every Monday morning, Annie would wrap up a parcel for her to take along, which would be exchanged for a loan of a few shillings. Jewellery, ornaments, clothes and shoes were all viable and Pierce’s best suit was a favourite item to pawn, as he had no occasion to wear it during the week.
Mary would dash along the street with the parcel, hoping to avoid her friends because she felt so ashamed. The following Friday evening she would be back there, clutching whatever Annie could spare, usually one or two shillings. Once the interest was taken out of that, she would use the remainder to pay off all or part of the loan and would retrieve as many items as possible, always starting with the shoes. Next Monday she would be back again, often with the same bundle, and she’d tell the pawnbroker, ‘Mummy says the same as last week, please.’ This time he would hand over slightly less cash, because the goods were a week older. If the full repayment, plus interest had not been paid by the end of the month he kept the belongings – that was the rather brutal deal.
In a rare act of kindness, the aunts had made their nieces red and white spotted dresses for Easter. The children were delighted and loved them. They didn’t have them for long, though, because grudgingly, a desperate Annie pawned these too, intent on getting them back but despairing when she was unable to come up with the money. Mary would never forget feeling the mixed emotions of shame, resentment and indignation when she’d seen two local girls wearing the dresses. Their dresses.
Living in such financial difficulty meant that every penny helped. Uncle Jack, Grandmother Kate’s brother, lived opposite them on Abbey Street and every week he would visit Kate. If the girls were there too, he would give them a penny between them. It wasn’t much but it was something, and Annie used to make sure that her daughters were there in order to receive the gift.
‘Go downstairs to Granny’s,’ she would say. ‘Uncle Jack’s arrived.’
The girls would traipse downstairs dutifully, pretending that they were simply visiting, and wait and wait until it was time for Jack to rummage in his pocket for a penny. He always made a big show of it and Kate would sit there, tutting, because he dragged it out for so long. When the penny was eventually handed over, the girls all had to give him a kiss and would then go back upstairs. They didn’t reap the reward to spend on treats, though – they secretly handed it over to Annie to put in the gas meter.
At Christmas, finding the money to buy small presents for their five children, as well as extra food and drink, was so difficult that Pierce always needed to ask a friend of his at the Electricity Board for a Christmas loan. Shrewd Annie would leave their main shopping trip until Christmas Eve, when trees and turkeys were sold off cheaply rather than not being sold at all, and in Woolworths, where everything was priced under sixpence, the girls were able to spend what little money Annie had been able to squirrel away for them. There, they bought small but heartfelt Christmas gifts for each other.
One year, just before Christmas, Pierce was delighted to be told that he was going to receive a wage rise. When he came home and told Annie the good news, she was even more excited than him.
‘That’s wonderful, Pierce!’ she said. ‘Well done. How much will it be?’
Pierce gave a little smile. ‘It’s not going to change our lives. I’m still going to do the pools.’
Annie gave him a wry look. ‘With the amount of effort you put into that, it’s about time we won something,’ she said, thinking of him in the armchair each week, hunched over the coupon, trying to forecast correctly that Saturday’s football match results.
‘I’m told it’ll bring my wage up to four pounds, though,’ he added.
It wasn’t much but nevertheless it would make a difference, and Annie thought that £4 sounded a lot more impressive than £3 17s.
When the day came that he was due to receive his increased pay packet, Annie was in high spirits, proud of her husband for reaching the £4 benchmark.
‘Daddy’s got a rise at work, girls. He’ll be bringing home extra money tonight,’ she said, sharing her pride and enthusiasm with her daughters. She could barely wait for him to finish work and, as it neared the time for his arrival, she gathered her daughters around her to wait outside the house for him. The girls were a little bemused but were happy enough to wait for their father’s return, as their mother became increasingly excited.
‘Here he comes!’ she exclaimed, as she saw Pierce in the distance, striding purposefully towards them. As they started waving, Pierce saw them and shook his fist in the air triumphantly, indicating that he had got the money. Annie kissed and hugged him warmly on the doorstep, as though he were a returning conqueror.
Before they went shopping on Christmas Eve, there used to be much excitement amongst the girls as they waited for Granddad to call them downstairs for his traditional festive routine. Over the course of the year he would have saved any new, shiny pennies that came his way and placed them in a little red money box in the shape of a pillar box, which he kept on the window ledge. The girls would gather excitedly at the top of the stairs, waiting for the call. When it came, they had to stop themselves from stampeding down and causing each other bodily harm.
In his living room, Granddad would be sitting in an armchair, smiling up at them as they jostled around him.
‘Right. Who would like to pass me my money bo
x?’ he would say, and there would be a race to get it from the window ledge. Granddad would give it a good rattle and make appreciative noises as the girls beamed at him in anticipation.
‘Well, now, there sounds like there is quite a bit in here,’ he would tease. Then, taking a knife, which had been placed carefully on the side table next to him, he would slide it part way into the slot and tip the box. A golden penny would slide down the knife and plop out of the opening. Holding it up, between finger and thumb, he would look meaningfully at the girls.
‘Oldest first,’ he would announce and proffer the coin to Mary, who would step forward eagerly and hold out her hand as he dropped the penny into her palm.
Once all the girls had a coin, the procedure would be repeated until the box was empty. The girls remained wide-eyed at the sight of one shiny coin sliding out after another. If they were lucky, they might have four or five pennies each, enough for some small toys, such as a yo-yo that could be bought for a penny or a toy drum in Woolworths, just three inches in diameter and filled with sweets. If they wanted to treat themselves, then an ice-cream cone was halfpenny and an ice-cream wafer sandwich one penny.
Once home from Christmas shopping down The Blue, the excited children were put to bed early, although all of them found it hard to sleep with the anticipation of what the next day would bring. That night, Pierce would hang up some of his socks by the fireplace for the girls and, by the time Annie had finished working her magic, each one would be bulging with an orange, an apple, a handful of nuts, a little packet of sweets, a thin book and a small toy, such as miniature tin weighing scales.
On Christmas morning there were excited squeals as the girls feverishly pulled out one delight after another from the tatty socks that had been magically transformed into Christmas stockings. In truth, what the girls received was little in terms of material form but they loved and cherished everything that they were given.
The Sisters of Battle Road Page 13