by Pip Granger
The Rest Centre we moved to in London’s Kensington was, according to Mother, a lot better than those awful places, but privacy was still at an absolute minimum, and indignities still had to be endured. Later, Mother told me that, as there were so few family rooms, families were split up, with men and boys housed in one section of the building and women and girls in another. Families earned one of the coveted private rooms by the simple method of staying long enough to work their way up to the head of the queue. Some of the family rooms even had the luxuries of their very own sink and a gas ring, which were two things that everyone longed for.
Being so tightly packed into the available space meant that such nasties as head lice, worms, ringworm or scabies spread as fast as crabs in a brothel amongst us inmates, and that’s where the indignities came in. There were regular inspections by ‘Nitty Nora’ and her colleagues whether we needed them or not. Worming pills and potions were doled out in the form of a piece of chocolate or chewing gum, but they fooled no one; the taste was awful.
I’m not sure why we ended up in a rest centre in Kensington when we were evicted from a cottage in the heart of Sussex. I think it may have had something to do with Mother’s work as a teacher. There was a shortage of qualified teachers in poor, Blitz-battered old London after the war, while Sussex probably had enough, so that suitable posts were hard to come by there.
Apart from the availability of work, there were other compensations for being temporarily housed in a London rest centre. Two of them were Vera and Iris. They were ‘working girls’, but they didn’t grind out their living in Woolworth’s, a laundry, a factory or an office – they did night work in the dark and dreary streets of post-war London. When they weren’t pounding the wet, winter pavements in their flimsy, peep-toed ‘tart’s shoes’ and murmuring ‘Fancy a good time, lovey?’ to likely-looking punters, they lived at the Rest Centre along with us and their own children. The pair of them became good friends to us, and Peter played on the local bomb sites with their children.
Theirs was a common enough wartime tale: an ill-considered knee-trembler with a GI, who literally came one day and went the next, left them with little bundles of joy and no obvious means of support. As Victorian morality remained alive and well long after the old Queen had gone to her just reward, there was often little sympathy for the girl who had loose knicker elastic, slack morals, the bad taste to ‘get herself’ in the family way and, even worse, the poor judgement to want to keep her child. Most such by-blows were quietly put up for adoption. Those who kept their children really needed the support of their families to manage. Vera and Iris had no such support. Iris was an orphan, thanks to the Blitz, while Vera’s family disowned her as soon as the bulge began to show.
However, despite their misfortune, they were a jolly pair, who enjoyed a drink, a dance, a fag and a laugh. Mother grew very fond of them. Not only did she share their love of a good time, but she was also very aware that she too had had ‘a little bastard’. She had been lucky enough to have supportive parents and a man who both stuck around and had a mother who was ready, willing, able and, indeed, eager to care for her baby. What’s more, by the time I was born, she was married to the actual father of her children. She became fast friends with Iris and Vera. They helped each other out with childcare, lent each other fags and money when they were able, and generally helped to keep each other’s spirits up.
When I was eighteen months old, Mother and Father were allotted one of the coveted family rooms, which provided both a modicum of privacy and that luxury of luxuries, the private sink. The room was shabby, but then, everywhere was shabby because materials for repairs, furniture and general home-making were still so scarce that you stood a better chance of getting a full set of hen’s teeth than you did of getting a new bit of lino, carpet or a set of curtains. The furniture was supplied, because so many had lost everything to the Blitz – or, in our case, the bailiff – but it was battered, scratched and sparse. There was a double bed for Mother and Father, an army surplus folding bed for Peter and a twenty-fifth-hand cot, held together in places by bits of string and twisted wire, for me. Most of our clothes were stuffed into one small utility chest of drawers, which meant that they came out too creased for Mother to wear to work, so a change of clothes meant an early stint at the communal ironing board before she set out.
One of the alcoves that flanked the boarded-up fireplace was given over to a hanging rail that took a few dresses, our one threadbare winter coat each, Mother’s good ‘interview’ suit, Father’s two jackets and several pairs of his elderly trousers. A faded bit of chintz was hung on sagging curtain wire to hide our makeshift wardrobe from view. The other alcove housed the coveted sink and a small, rickety two-tier table with a gas ring on top and three chipped cups, two saucers, four plates, the couple of jam jars we used as glasses and the one that held our few bits of cutlery. On the floor, beneath the sink, and hidden behind yet more sagging and faded chintz, was our one saucepan, one frying pan, and a colander.
Packets of tea, sugar (when available), margarine and any other stores were kept in a cardboard box or two, stuffed out of sight under the bed. The kettle lived permanently on the ring unless Mother was trying to whip up an illegal, but cheap, simple meal of stew, boiled eggs or homemade soup. Cooking was not allowed in the rooms, but sometimes funds were so low that eating out at an ABC café or getting a meal from the local chippy was not an option. The authorities supplied the gas ring to make tea and heat water for washing and shaving. They knew that to deprive a Brit of a reviving cuppa was a cruelty too far and would probably lead to a general uprising of thoroughly cheesed-off inmates.
Our room had a large, draughty sash window that overlooked the bomb site where Peter and the other older children habitually played. It was an incredibly dangerous playground, as, among the fireweed and buddleia, there lurked mounds of shattered brick, broken glass, twisted, broken, jagged pipes and splintered wood, complete with vicious, rusty nails that stuck out ready to snag, scratch or puncture the unwary. Peter’s precious flannel shorts, his knitted jumpers, shirts and baggy socks bore witness to the bomb site hazards, as did his arms and legs, but nag as she might, neither Mother, nor any of the other mums, could keep their kids away from it. It was the only handy place to go to get away from the noise, smell and air of depressed defeat that hung about the dingy rooms and corridors of the crowded Rest Centre.
Once again, what had started out as a blessing (with running water and gas ring), ended up being the cause of yet another catastrophe. The longed-for privacy led to yet another pregnancy, and it could not have come at a worse time. We were homeless, practically penniless – despite Mother’s teaching salary – living in one room and now, horror of horrors, the family breadwinner had a bun in her oven. Once the baby began to show, Mother’s bread-winning would be over, at least until after the baby was born.
In the late 1940s, children were definitely not supposed to know where babies came from, and an obviously pregnant teacher might just give her pupils a hint. It wasn’t all that long since women had been required to leave their teaching posts as soon as they married, as it was considered improper for married women to work in any of the professions.
Legal abortion was not available then, nor for many years after. The only options women had when they found themselves with an unwanted baby on the way, were to go through with the pregnancy and have the child adopted, go to a backstreet abortionist and pay them to do the deed, with wildly varying fees and degrees of skill, hygiene and basic anatomical knowledge, or simply to put up and shut up, and resign themselves to another mouth to feed and another body to house and clothe. None of these was open to Mother if she were to continue to keep us all in the style to which we had become accustomed, so the ‘do it yourself’ method, using a knitting needle and a bottle of gin, was all that she felt she was left with.
Then, to add to the general joys, Father disappeared.
‘What do you mean he’s buggered off?’ Vera demanded, an
gry but not even remotely shocked. Nothing men did surprised her, or so she told my mother: she was, after all, a ‘five bob and find your own railings’ brass, and she had met and serviced all sorts in her time.
‘I mean that Doug has buggered off. The bastard emptied my purse before he went. He left a note, said he couldn’t face living here with a new baby and no money coming in, and that he was sorry.’
‘Sorry! Sorry! I’ll make the bastard sorry if I catch hold of him, he’ll be singing soprano before he can say “balls”, take my word on that.’
So it was that Mother supplied her own knitting needle – a size eight, or so she said – but Iris and Vera kindly supplied the gin, Father having stolen our last farthing.
‘Book the bathroom for a hot bath as early as you can on Saturday morning, so the water’s still as hot as you can get it,’ advised Iris, who had some experience of the process. ‘It opens things up a bit and relaxes your muscles and that helps. Me and Vera’ll look after the kids while you get the job done. We’ll keep an eye on you an’ all, make sure you’re OK.’
‘Does it hurt?’ Mother asked.
‘Not much, as long as your aim’s all right. Don’t rush it. Take it slow, that’s my advice, sort of feel your way in,’ Vera told her kindly. ‘After’s no worse than your usual contractions and, as the baby’s still small, there’s plenty of room for it to slide out easy.’
‘That’s right,’ Iris chipped in. ‘And boil your needle first, that’s best, but let it cool down before you use it, or you’ll burn yourself.’
Mother followed their instructions to the letter the following Saturday morning, fortified by vast quantities of gin, but things did not go smoothly. By the early hours of Monday morning, Mother was at death’s door again. This time it was septicaemia that almost did for her, despite her boiling the needle as instructed. Alarmed at her condition, and fearful that the authorities would hear her delirious moaning, Vera called an ambulance.
While she hovered between life and death in the local hospital, Vera and Iris fought like wildcats to thwart the authority’s plan to take Peter and me into care. ‘You’re not taking ’em, I tell you,’ insisted Vera, her voice rising in fury. ‘Joan’s not coming out to nothing. That bleeder of a husband of hers has gone, and I reckon she’d curl up an’ die of mortification and just plain misery if she lost her kids as well. We’ll take turns looking after the poor little buggers until she’s fit to come back to ’em.’
‘Yes, and we’ll look for that toe-rag of a dad of theirs while we’re at it. I don’t s’pose he’ll be hard to find. A quick blimp round the boozers down Soho way should turn him up,’ Iris assured the warden. ‘You’ll only have to get them out of the home again if he comes back here to look after ’em. Hardly seems worth your trouble.’
Their arguments swung it, at least temporarily, but the warden insisted ‘Find the father fast or off they go’, so Iris and Vera started their search for Father immediately. Between times, they took it in turns to see to the children – their own and us – while the other went to work.
It didn’t take them long to find our father. He was, as predicted, propping up the bar at The French House in Soho’s Dean Street. Everyone in the know called it ‘The French’ because it had a French landlord and the Free French met there with their leader, Charles de Gaulle, during the war. The name on the sign was the York Minster, but only strangers ever called it that.
It was Vera who found him and dragged him back to us at the Rest Centre, threatening him all the while, ‘I’ll castrate you with a rusty razor blade if you try to leg it again, you double-dyed swine, you. The kids need you, Joan needs you, and me and Iris need you. We have to get back to work. So, if you have it away on your toes again, you’d better leave the bleeding country, because if any of us finds you, it’ll be you in hospital next time, learning to walk like a cowboy what’s lost his ’orse.’
As it turned out, it wasn’t Father who was rushed to hospital within minutes of his return, it was me. I suffered a fractured skull, and I was swiftly admitted to the hospital where my mother lay dying. Father’s story was that I was sitting on a low bed, playing with my toes, when he walked in. Apparently, my joy at seeing him was so unconfined that I flung out my arms wide to him, yelled a delighted ‘Daddy!’ and promptly fell on the floor and cracked my head. Realizing that the injury was serious, Father and Vera rushed me to hospital in a taxi, courtesy of Iris, who’d had a good night and was in funds. Iris stayed behind to keep an eye on the other children and to rest up a bit after her strenuous night’s work. I was admitted to the children’s ward immediately.
Once Father was certain I was in good hands, Vera dragged him down to the ward where Mother lay unconscious. He was unable to see her, it not being visiting time, but a nurse did tell him how his wife was doing – not at all well, apparently.
Vera nodded towards a uniformed figure sitting in the corridor reading a newspaper. ‘What’s old Andrews doing there? He’s a bit off his beat, ain’t he?’
‘He’s waiting to see if your friend comes round, so he can charge her with performing an illegal abortion on herself,’ said the nurse.
‘He what?’ Vera roared, only to be shushed by the nurse, who looked around nervously in case anyone had heard.
Father was all for punching said officer on the nose, but Vera was firm. ‘Don’t you dare! Joan and the kids don’t need you in clink, and unless you’re going to get off your arse and earn the money to pay the fine that you’ll get as well, you’d better stay put. I’ll deal with Andrews,’ she said and strode off to do just that. It didn’t take long.
‘What did you say to get rid of him?’ Father asked once they were finally heading back to the Rest Centre.
‘Not a lot. I just told him that I’d tell his missus that he was one of my regulars, that he always settled for a bung of a few bob or a bit of the other – or both, the greedy sod – rather than charge me with soliciting. That brought about a change of attitude in double-quick time, I can tell you.’
Mother always swore that it was a whispered conversation between nurses about my head injury that brought her back from the brink.
‘You needed me, and anyway, I was so furious with your father that I couldn’t wait to get out so that I could give him the tongue-lashing that he so thoroughly deserved.’
It appeared that everyone believed Father’s story of my fall from the bed, but I have wondered about it since. Personally, I think it was far more likely that he was drunk, and that he inadvertently dropped me. Naturally, he would lie about it, sure in the knowledge that if Vera didn’t get him with the threatened rusty razor blade, then Mother certainly would have done.
Mother finally recovered from the abortion, and was neither charged nor even interviewed by the police, thanks to her friend Vera. Father, meanwhile, was chastened by the whole thing, and stayed put to look after me while Mother went back to school and teaching. Shortly after Mother was safely returned to us, Vera was finally rehoused on a new estate somewhere in Essex, while Iris married a widower from Streatham and settled down to look after him, his three young children and his widowed mother. As Vera said at the time, it might have been easier for her to stay on the streets, but then again, maybe not. Sadly, over time, Mother lost touch with her friends, but she never forgot them, or their kindness to her and, indeed, her children.
3
Marts Toast, Daddy
In the late 1940s and early ’50s, if you had a heart’s desire, a simple yen or an urgent need for anything – a pair of double bed sheets, a Siamese kitten, Spanish guitar lessons, a French chef, a mandolin in good condition, a cleaner, a second-hand boiler, two dozen soup plates, a violin or handmade buttonholes – then it paid to join the cluster of people reading the scruffy envelopes, slips of paper and yellowed postcards that festooned the newsagent’s window in Old Compton Street, in Soho. If you wanted an actual newspaper – any newspaper, from The Times to La Vie Parisienne, Heraldo de Madrid, Hellas, the New York Times
or the Times of India – then all you had to do was step through the door, slap your coins on the counter and choose from the huge variety of newsprint on offer in the tiny little shop, which was called, I believe, Moroni’s.
I first experienced this world after Mother and I had been discharged from hospital. Things settled into an uneasy truce at the Rest Centre; Mother went back to teaching, while Peter continued going to the local school, and I was left in the care of Father.
We soon developed our own routine. Once up and dressed, we’d make our way to the tube station, with me riding on Father’s shoulders to speed things up a bit. We’d rattle our way on the Bakerloo Line to Piccadilly Circus, drop into Moroni’s for a packet of fags, the News Chronicle and a brief chat as to who was about that day. While Father was talking, I’d examine the myriad foreign newspapers, paying special attention to anything that had a different kind of script. Sometimes, we’d make up names for the ones that Father couldn’t read to me; I remember that we liked to alliterate, and came up with the Constantinople Clarion, the Macao Messenger, the Turkish Trumpet and the Siberian Siren, among others. On a good day, Father would pretend to read one of the front pages to me, weaving fantastical tales of dragons stalking the Singapore streets, munching humble coolies and rich silk merchants alike for their breakfast – although they naturally preferred the fat merchants, as poor coolies were tough and on the stringy side.