The real reason I was never aware of any actual RAF station or maintenance unit in Dumfries, and so never knew where my father went, was that we lived out of town, not among other families with fathers doing the same job, as in Carlisle. We were not on a council estate this time, but renting accommodation over a disused shop on a busy thoroughfare, the Annan Road, leading out of Dumfries.
Hmm, that does sound suspicious. Even more suspicious was the fact that below us, where the shop had once been but was now boarded up, lived a strange single man with a limp and a frightening face who had a foreign accent. We could hear him wandering around in the night, talking to himself in an unfamiliar language. Sending radio messages to Berlin on a transmitter made out of biscuit tins? That was my first suspicion, which I immediately related in a whisper to my twin sisters. Didn’t bother telling Johnny. He was too young and too English.
My mother eventually informed us that he was a Polish pilot who had fought on our side and been very brave, but had been badly burned and invalided out. So we should be nice to him. Polish airmen, of course, did play an important in the last war.
The house was called Nancyville. It made it seem as if we had achieved a slight social step up, living in a house with a name not a number. Beside us were other private houses, lived in by very nice people. One of whom, a genteel elderly lady, knocked on our door the moment we arrived and brought us soup. ‘Wasn’t that awfie nice?’ said my mother. We never saw her again. I think it was the sight and sound of four screaming kids under the age of seven that put her off.
For a while we had a cat, called Peter, the only time in my growing-up family life, in Carlisle or Dumfries, that we ever had a pet, despite begging our mother. She had enough to worry about. This cat once disappeared, didn’t come back for weeks, and we were sure it was a goner, then one morning it reappeared from over the fields behind our house, dragging behind it a large trap. Its foot had been caught and mangled so much it had to be amputated. Until the end of its life, we could hear Peter wandering round in the middle of the night going pad pad pad thump, pad pad pad thump, as every fourth step his gammy stumpy leg hit the lino.
You entered the house downstairs at the side, into a kitchen, then beyond into a living room. Upstairs were just two bedrooms. We four children slept in one bedroom and our parents slept in the other.
Our bedroom was at the front of the house overlooking the busy Annan Road. All night long there were military convoys roaring past on the way to Carlisle and the South. Every few minutes their headlights pierced our bedroom dark, despite the blackout blinds, brilliantly illuminating the four of us, burrowing down in our beds, blankets over our little heads, trying to sleep.
Before bed every night, our mother would make us kneel down beside the bed, put our hands together, close our eyes and say the Lord’s Prayer. This was followed by ‘Bless Mum and Dad, Annabelle, Marion and Johnny, our grandmothers, all our uncles and aunts, all our airmen, soldiers and sailors, politicians, the royal family . . .’ The Polish war hero down below would often get a mention, or anyone else my mother was currently concerned about, such as Peter the cat.
Having coaxed us all into bed, she would then get us up again and put each of us on the potty. She had a fetish that we each had to perform before bed, either a number one or number two. So we would strain and stretch and pretend we had performed, till our little bottoms were indented with deep cold rings, not wanting to be given the dreaded senna pods or syrup of figs or whatever pet laxative she currently believed in. The entire nation’s mothers were in a continual panic about bowel movements, which is strange, considering that our whole diet during the war consisted of the roughest of roughage, the sort of diet you would now pay extra for.
When eventually the praying and potty rituals were over, as the oldest I would try to create some discipline in the bedroom, attempting to get us all to sleep.
‘One, two, three, goodnight,’ I would say, which was the signal for no more talking. Then one of them would talk, forgetting. I would have to start all over again.
‘One, two, three, GOODNIGHT!’
This could go on for ages, with me shouting, and them winding me up by starting to talk again.
During the day, if the American convoys were still rumbling past, all the local kids would stand in the gutters making a ‘V for Victory’ sign at them. I could never manage to get my fingers arranged the right way, so my mother would have to come out in the street and do it for me.
The object was to shout, ‘Got any gum, chum!’ at the Yanks, smile and wave, pathetically but appealingly, in the hope that they would chuck out some sweets or chewing gum. They often did, which led to a mass stampede as we rushed into the road, trying to avoid the oncoming jeeps and trucks, pushing and shoving each other to secure the treasures.
I went to the local primary school, Noblehill school, just along the road from Nancyville, on the same side. I remember it as being enormous but in fact there were only three classes. While I was there, sometime between 1943 and 1947, there was a tremendous fire in the school, with large parts burned to the ground, which of course meant we couldn’t go there for several weeks.
I had a fight in the playground one day. Some brute was bullying me, probably for having an English accent. He had been doing it for some days and I had put up with it, being a scaredy-cat and always willing to please and appease, but this time I couldn’t bear it any longer. He was taller and bigger than me and I was small and weedy and wheezy, but from somewhere I summoned the willpower and strength to lash out like a wild animal, screaming and shouting, punching and kicking him. Everyone stopped their playground games and rushed over, shouting ‘FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!’ He was so surprised at what he had unleashed that he backed away. And never bothered me again.
I also got teased a bit about my buck teeth and the fact that there was a slight gap in the middle. (Apparent on the front jacket photo of this book, if you put on your best specs.) I had not really been aware of it, till some sweet girl in the class pointed it out, then of course others joined in. The teacher must have heard all this, for at the end of the lesson she called me over, on my own. ‘I always think there is something attractive about uneven teeth.’ Wasn’t that kind, wasn’t that thoughtful. I immediately forgot about it from then on. The gap, such as it was, disappeared anyway with age. Oh, if only all unpleasant and unattractive things we worry about could disappear with age.
When I was about nine or ten, in the top class, I went on a school outing to Glengonnar camp, in the Leadhills. It seemed miles and miles away, but was probably only about an hour’s distance, up in the hills beyond Moffat, an area where once there had been lead mines. We stayed in wooden huts which had dormitories, went on nature trails and had campfires. My twin sisters and younger brother – then aged around six and four – were incredibly jealous that I should be so favoured, going away on such an adventure.
For some reason, I can still remember a song we sang by the campfire, to the tune of ‘Oh My Darling, Clementine’.
To Glengonnar, to Glengonnar,
Came the children with a will
From St Michaels and St Josephs
Larry Now and Noblehill.
These were the names of other local Dumfries schools that were also at the camp. Larry Now stood for Laurieknowe Primary School.
Back home, I taught Marion, Annabelle and Johnny the words of this fairly pathetic song and we all used to sing it in the dark in our beds to get ourselves to sleep before the next convoy woke us all up. Who said we didn’t have fun in wartime . . .
I had a good friend in the Annan Road called Bertie Williamson. His family had a wood yard beside their house where we used play. It was quite dangerous, as the logs could fall on you and bury you underneath. His father was a barber in the middle of the town, a small asthmatic man, who used to work bent over his customers so you could see his skinny, weedy bottom. He cut my hair for free, which was why I went there. I think he took pity on our family as my mother was very often ill. Something
to do with varicose veins. She was always being told she needed an operation.
I used to go to town on my own every Saturday, running messages for the neighbours, going on the bus clutching shopping bags, shopping lists and the money. I can’t have been more than ten at the time, yet I was sent off alone, given such responsibility. I don’t think my own children were allowed on the bus on their own till they were grown-up, well, till they were teenagers. Parents were so trusting. There was no talk of paedophiles and loonies, muggers and knifemen wanting to harm you or dodgy people trying to spirit you away. Obviously they existed, but we were not warned about them. Perhaps our parents were as innocent as we were.
The shops I went to were right in the middle of the town, in the High Street, mainly grocers like Lipton’s, the Home and Colonial or the Co-op, the same sort of grocery stores we had in Carlisle. I loved watching the pulley devices which whizzed across the shop floor carrying little metal canisters. They would end up in a hidden cubicle where someone would open them, check the order and the money, then put the change back in the canister and whiz it back to the relevant counter. I found it fascinating and exciting, like watching an aerial train set, but really, what a nonsense, what a palaver. Why did they do it? Could they not trust individual shop assistants to handle money?
Smaller shops never had such fancy technology and the shopkeepers would do it all in their heads or on the back of a paper bag, instantly adding up 19/11, 12/6 and 5/7, often with halfpennies and farthings thrown in. Today you see dopey assistants in a panic when they have to add £7 and £4 together, using expensive electronic calculating machines.
My mother did have to go into hospital for an operation and for several weeks it was my job to look after my brother and sisters after school, till my father came home from work. I made them their tea, which always consisted of the same thing – toast. Sometimes I spoiled them and boiled them potatoes as well. They used to moan and groan as the toast was burned and the spuds half-raw. I would slap it down and say, ‘That’s all you’re getting, eat up or shut up.’ I don’t think Health and Safety would allow any child of ten to look after three younger ones – and have pans of boiling water on a stove.
In 1947, when I had just turned eleven, and after only four years in Dumfries, we were on the move once again, leaving Dumfries for good.
Last time I was there our old house Nancyville had been converted back into a shop. Noblehill school was still there, but now has an additional building – a mosque. Who could have imagined that in 1947?
I now also know, which I didn’t at the time, that Dumfries did have an aerodrome, which opened in 1938, and then, on 18 June 1940, an RAF maintenance unit was inaugurated, 18 MU. I was never aware of either at the time. That must have been why we moved, to help out at a new MU, my father being a dab hand by now at moving paperclips and pencils around.
One of my abiding memories of living in Dumfries is of a condom, not that I realised then what it was. One Sunday morning, when I was about eight, I went to the lavatory, which was at the top of the stairs, and there floating in the water was what I thought was a balloon. I picked it up and went with it into my parents’ bedroom.
‘Look, Mam, someone has left a balloon in the lavvy. I bet it was that Marion.’
I can still see her face, a mix of shock and worry, panic and embarrassment. She glared at my dad on the other side of the bed, who turned over and went back to sleep. She got out of bed and took it gingerly from my outstretched hand. Strange how that scene stuck in my mind, without knowing what the object was. It seemed to haunt me for some years, trouble me, without understanding why. Perhaps it was my mother’s reaction to me appearing with it, the atmosphere it created, which registered on my innocent young mind.
I am now old and in that way quite innocent. I have somehow managed to reach the age of eighty without ever using a condom. I now realise, of course, that the last thing my mother would have wanted at the height of the war, with four young children and her poor health, was to have another child.
6
ME AND THE WAR
One day in 1947 in Dumfries we woke up and were told a furniture van was coming, so we had to get ready. As the oldest, I was being allowed to travel in the back of the van with the furniture. My dad sat in the front with the driver and his mate. My mother, sisters and brother were going on the train.
I was thrilled to be allowed to sit in the back of the removal van, as rides in any sort of vehicle were rare. After a few miles, I began to feel sick. I couldn’t get my dad’s attention, as he was chatting away to the driver. When we got to Carlisle, and drew up once again in the St Ann’s council estate, I was violently sick. Welcome back to England.
Yes, we had returned to Carlisle. Not very exciting or foreign this time, but on the other hand it did feel a bit like coming home, even though I had lost my English accent.
And in Carlisle we stayed from then on. Which meant that all my wartime years were spent in either Carlisle or Dumfries, well away from any front-line bombing. Nevertheless, the effects of the war were felt wherever you were, whatever your situation. But at the time, it just seemed sort of normal, how it was. I had only known wartime, being only three years old when the war started in 1939. When I did come across examples of prewar life, such as the fat, colourful comics that children of my age read back in the thirties, I could not believe comics had ever looked like that. Thanks to my relations in Canada, we sometimes did get sent a Yankee comic. They were like fantasy publications.
When I had been listening to the convoys at night, while lying in bed, I did not understand fully what was going on, where they were going. It was just heavy traffic. It was only being at school that I began to pick up roughly what the war was all about.
One day at school in Dumfries the teacher got each of us to knit a square. She then stitched them all together to make one big blanket. She then explained that they were going to be sent off to cover our brave soldiers who were freezing and filthy out there somewhere in the trenches. I always felt sorry for the poor sod who got any of my squares in his blanket. They were always a funny shape, lots of holes, stray ends hanging out, which if you pulled the whole square unravelled.
I did learn needlework, which all the boys in my class did, sewing on my own buttons. I also darned my own socks when they got a hole, using a large wooden mushroom over which you pulled the sock tight while you darned the offending hole. I rather enjoyed this simple technology, feeling I was a real craftsman. I still do my own sewing and putting-on of buttons, when needed, which is rare these days. Everything is disposable, nothing is meant to last.
My mother had a sewing machine, but she wasn’t very good at it, unlike my Grandma Brechin, who was a whiz on her Singer, the sort of machine that was a piece of furniture in itself, a table with a treadle underneath. You pedalled away on it like a bicycle, turning wheels and pulleys, giving off a constant hum as if a couple of million wasps had got into her bedroom. I was not supposed to touch it. Too precious. I did once secretly have a go and mucked it up, stitching some vital piece of clothing she had been working on all the wrong way, then in trying to right it I broke the needle.
In wartime, it was a case of make do and mend, with nothing new to buy in the shops, so everyone was constantly stitching and repairing, ripping up old items and remaking them. Even my father did his bit, at least he tried to when we were very young, repairing our shoes, like all good wartime dads. You bought packets of these little steel studs, which you hammered on to the toes or heels of shoes to make them last longer. More complicated was replacing a whole new rubber sole, which you had to stick on with glue, then perhaps shave with a Stanley knife if it had been fitted badly. Did we have a Stanley knife in those days? My dad was useless at such jobs. Halfway to school the sole came loose and flip-flapped till you had to rip it all off. The steel studs usually stayed on, but you made a sound like a carthorse, clanking along the pavements. Useful in fights, though, for kicking people.
At prima
ry school one day in Dumfries all those children whose father was a prisoner of war had to put up their hands. They came out to the front and each was given a food parcel. I was so jealous.
‘Why aren’t you a prisoner of war, Dad?’ I accused him when I got home. ‘It’s not fair.’
We endlessly collected wastepaper to help the war effort. In all the comics, such as they were, thin and weedy specimens on rubbish grey paper, there was always a drawing of a massive pile of wastepaper, getting bigger and bigger in each issue, with the word ‘BERLIN’ written on the top. Somehow, so it seemed to suggest, we would get to Berlin, knock the Nassies out, if only we could save enough wastepaper. Were we going to spread it out across the Channel and walk there? Or make paper darts and throw them at Hitler?
The Nazis were always called the ‘Nassies’, at least among most of the kids at primary school, in Carlisle or Dumfries, and probably elsewhere as well. I assumed it started with not knowing how to pronounce the letter ‘z’, or perhaps we were just being satirical. The Germans as a nation were always Jerries, which in a way was quite affectionate.
I didn’t particularly hate them. They were just the enemy, baddies we had been fighting for as long as I could remember, the way it has always been, would probably always be. The dreaded Japs, they were much more scary and fiendish.
Our heroes in life were the American soldiers. They looked so handsome and healthy whenever you saw them, with square jaws, clean sparkling teeth, great smiles, terrific crew-cut hair, all wearing neat, smooth uniforms made of excellent cloth, both ordinary soldiers as well as officers, so unlike the horrible itchy, cheap, rough serge that all our brave lads had to wear. They always had goodies coming out of their pockets – gum for the kids, nylons for the young women. No wonder the girls fell at their feet. Poor old Tommies.
It is often said that the biggest influence on our post-war popular culture, right through the fifties and sixties, was American music and films. I think it was the chewing gum and the nylons, that’s what started it, made us all swoon, made us followers of their fashion, envy everything that they had.
The Co-Op's Got Bananas Page 4