Bombsites and Lollipops: My 1950s East End Childhood

by Jacky Hyams

  Did someone say that lessons like this teach you how to control your emotions, measure your reaction, think a bit before verbalising your feelings? I’d like to tell you that this little seaside episode taught me a valuable lesson. But I won’t lie. It was only the beginning of a life spent all too frequently regretting my over-enthusiasm to say exactly what I think, the minute I think it. You do improve a bit with age, of course. But I still blame the parents.

  They never knew when it was time to tell their little darling to sit down and shut up.

  CHAPTER 11

  A PIANO

  We are in a big white house, somewhere in a place called Surrey.

  I have never been inside a house like this, so I am entranced, if somewhat awed, by everything around me: the thick, plush, pale carpets, tall vases on polished surfaces containing huge colourful blooms, exquisite antique chairs with silk cushions, elegant long windows with velvet drapes overlooking an immense garden that seems to go on for ever … such a plush, quiet, different world from the one we inhabit.

  We’ve been driven here in a very big chauffeur driven car, my mum and I, all the way from home to meet our host, Lol, a good friend of my dad’s from the pub. Lol and his wife Maggie have invited us here for high tea. My dad, of course, is working. He’s been pally with this couple for ages, sometimes going to West-End shows with them. Lol and Maggie, who don’t have any kids of their own, have insisted we come over. They want to meet me – and show us their lovely home.

  Lol, a very handsome man in his forties, with slicked-back dark brown hair, and a look of Robert Taylor, a movie favourite of the fifties, had been a publican before the war. Now, we don’t know what he does. Or rather, no one is saying. But this big house, with its own driveway, seems to confirm what my mum has always told me about Lol and Maggie. Whenever they’re mentioned, she says, ‘They’re very rich. He owns a Bentley, that’s one of the most expensive cars you can buy. And she gets all her clothes from abroad, can you believe that? She had this beautiful white organdie blouse on; I had to ask her where it came from. “I think it’s from Paris,” she said, like she’d just picked it up off a stall in the Lane!’

  For my mum, clothes were everything, the signal to the world that gave you all the status – and admiration – you needed. By now, my dad’s ever-open wallet meant her own crammed wardrobe bore witness to this: an array of crepe de Chine dresses, made to measure, neat two-piece tailored suits, coats in fine wools, skirts of every variety, blouses made of silk and satins: she had no need to envy anyone, really, when it came to looking good. Nowadays, she’d be buying up bigtime at Selfridges, Sloane Street or online at Net-a-Porter. But there’s nothing remotely new about female one-upmanship when it comes to what you wear: Maggie, by my mum’s glamour-girl standards, could shop in Paris – ergo Maggie Had It All.

  Most of my dad’s friends were atypical East Enders, rough and ready Jewish stallholders or cockney shopkeepers with a ribald sense of humour, wisecracking their way through life; the sort of people who loved a laugh, a knees-up. Yet Lol and Maggie stood apart from the rest – rich, mysterious, almost exotic in a way, and everything about them smacked of English gentility. They had class.

  Lol, this particular day, is immaculate, expensive shoes shined to perfection, perfectly cut Savile Row suit and discreet silk tie. He shows us around their vast palace. My mum, for once, is subdued, quiet as we climb the soft-carpeted stairs and Lol reveals the upstairs area. Four bedrooms, two big bathrooms, all beautifully furnished, everything perfect. There’s even a library with more books than I’ve ever seen in one place. And there are lots of photos in big silver frames, mostly of Maggie and Lol on holiday in faraway places like the South of France. She’s a stunning redhead, manicured, perfectly coiffed, discreetly bejewelled, reed thin.

  ‘Where’s Maggie?’ Mum ventures. ‘Oh she’s gone out in her car,’ says Lol airily. ‘She had an appointment in the West End. She’s sorry she’ll miss you. But there’ll be another time.’

  This is extremely odd. Maggie was reportedly dying to meet me. And why hasn’t Lol said a word about her mysterious vanishing act until my mum actually asked him?

  Our tour over, he suggests I wander round their garden. ‘Go and have a look at the flowers, Jacky,’ he says, opening the big French doors and ushering me outside.

  I’m a bit bemused by all this grandeur and space, but nonetheless I step outside and wander around for a bit, amidst the manicured lawns and the pretty flowerbeds. But it’s all too much for me, a true Hackney kid whose daily vistas are grungy crowded streets and shops and street markets, with the occasional trip to the seaside or the West End thrown in. I don’t really know – or yet appreciate – vast green spaces: I’ve only been in a big garden a couple of times before on a rare visit to my Sussex cousins. So the huge garden, for me, is somehow strange, intimidating, rather than a delight. I walk around for a while. Then I step back through the French doors. My mum rushes forward and takes my hand. ‘Let’s see what Lol’s got for us for tea, Jac.’

  Lol is the perfect host. In a big dining room, at a long table covered by a white linen cloth, everything is already set up for our tea: tiny triangular egg-and-cress sandwiches, sliced fruitcake, warm, freshly baked scones, clotted cream, raspberry jam, butter, linen napkins, silver cutlery, fine porcelain crockery. He pours out our tea and encourages me to tuck into the scones (not that I need much encouragement). We spend a happy half hour, Lol putting us both at ease, asking me about dancing class, what books I like, talking to Molly about shows they’ve seen, a genial, utterly charming, urbane man in a sophisticated setting. I’m not used to it but I’m pretty impressed. So is my mum, although she’s a bit subdued.

  In the corner of the big room stands a large black piano. I can’t play but Lol encourages me to muck around on the keys for a bit, while he and Molly finish their tea. Once they’ve finished, he walks over to the piano and seats himself on the piano stool.

  ‘Now I’m going to play something for you two,’ he says, winking at me.

  Then he starts to play, a skilful, experienced pianist, his fingers barely seem to touch the keys. He starts singing too, a song that is very popular at the time; everyone knows it. It’s the theme song from a movie called Moulin Rouge, which was a big hit in 1952. We haven’t seen the movie, but we know the song. It’s a lovely song, a plaintive lover’s plea called ‘Where is Your Heart?’.

  ‘Whenever we kiss, I worry and wonder, your lips may be near. But where is your heart?’ sings Lol, his voice well modulated and smooth, hitting the notes perfectly. Molly and I are entranced, mesmerised by it all. At one point, my mother takes out a hankie and dabs her eyes. This handsome man, singing this plaintive song for us in such a beautiful setting: it’s a moment to remember. But my childish antennae can sense a certain poignancy in his voice; it’s all tinged with sadness, though I couldn’t have told you why.

  Half an hour later, Lol says farewell to us as we climb into the big Bentley and his chauffeur silently drives us home, through winding green country lanes of even bigger, grander houses than the one we’ve just left.

  ‘Why did he sing us that sad song, mum?’ I ask Molly, who seems lost in some kind of wistful reverie.

  ‘And where was Maggie? I thought she wanted to meet me.’

  ‘So did I Jac,’ sighs Molly. ‘I don’t know about the singing. But it’s a lovely song, isn’t it?’

  I don’t hear any more about Lol and Maggie for ages. Neither of my parents mention them. Then, some months later, I ask my mum about them: I can’t quite forget the handsome man at the piano and the haunting love song.

  ‘Look, Jac, we don’t know what happened but … Maggie’s dead. Ging says she was at home, asleep in bed. They think she had some sort of heart attack in the night. Lol’s so upset; he’s sold the house and moved to America. He’s got some kind of business there.’

  By now, I’m such an inquisitive kid that I’m not at all satisfied with this.

  I’m shocked that
she’s dead, of course, but there are so many overhanging questions from our brief visit. Why didn’t Maggie stick around to see us that day? And why was Lol singing that sad song? Something was very wrong. But I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

  Yet there were, of course, rumours swirling around the Lane and the pub. And when I ask my mum again, a few weeks later, she tells me what people are saying. It’s pretty nasty, but she tells me just the same (she knows all too well that at nine, I won’t let up with my ‘Why this? Why that?’ questions until I get a satisfactory answer).

  ‘They’re saying that he bumped her off and got away with it. They weren’t getting on apparently. There’s a story that he had another woman set up in a flat in the West End. I dunno. I don’t believe all that stuff about him doing it. She died, that’s all. They all sit around in the George & Dragon and make things up, if you ask me.’

  Yet I never quite forgot that afternoon tea in the big house in Surrey – and the bad news that came afterwards. And, incredibly, decades later, when my mum is in her eighties, long widowed and living alone, we start to reminisce one day about those years of my childhood and I mention the story of Lol and Maggie.

  Yes, she remembers it.

  ‘They said he bumped her off, didn’t they?’ she muses. ‘Hmm … well you never knew then, with some of your dad’s friends, what they might get up to.

  ‘But he was a real ladies man. He tried it on with me, in the house, when you were out in the garden. He tried to kiss me – with you around too! I was so embarrassed. And then you came back in! But I never told your father, he’d have gone potty.’

  I’m not surprised Lol fancied my mum; many did. But the spicy revelation still doesn’t solve the mystery of it all. Yet to this day, if I ever hear that song, an icy shiver runs down my spine. Where indeed, was Lol’s heart? And what was the truth about Maggie?

  CHAPTER 12

  FARTHINGS

  I hated farthings. Coins mean so little now. But they were a big deal to kids back then. You could take the ‘empties’, empty glass bottles of pop, like Corona fizzy lemonade or Tizer (fizzy, red and known as ‘the Appetiser’, a testament to the power of advertising), back to the local off-licence or sweet shop and exchange them for tuppence each. Even now, the ancient pounds, shilling and pence currency, replaced by decimal currency in 1971, carries a potent nostalgia factor. Brass threepenny bits were the most attractive coins to kids, heavier than pennies and they actually bought you an ounce or two of your favourite sweets, neatly served up in a paper bag. Every kid liked threepenny bits. You had spending power.

  But farthings were something else, piffling and irrelevant. You couldn’t buy anything for a farthing with its daft little wren on the front, though they didn’t actually stop being legal tender until 1960. Because they were so titchy, they had a habit of slipping down the sides of sofas or remaining hidden under floorboards for years. So if no one was around, one of my favourite kiddie joys was to chuck a handful of farthings out, right over the top of the landing outside our flat.

  It has to be said, throwing money around for no reason was a bit of a metaphor for the backdrop to my childhood – using money to buy whatever you fancied, never treating it with any respect, blithely assuming there’d be more whenever you needed it. Live for the moment. Tomorrow never comes. All the clichés of careless living. And, essentially, a very ‘street’ way of viewing money, if you ran a busy market stall, traded in black-market goods or took bets in pubs like my father. You could always go out and earn more, even if the method wasn’t strictly legit. And once earned again it was there to spend. Or, in the case of some of my dad’s punters, there to deprive the wife and kids of any extra by putting it on an each-way bet on the 3 o’clock at Redcar. And losing.

  I never had a piggy bank, nor did I ever receive any encouragement to save money. ‘Saving’ was a meaningless word, never heard or discussed at home. After I reached about five, I’d be given the odd sixpence or shilling to spend by myself, frequently in one of the two sweet shops close by. The smaller shop, bang on the corner of our street on Shacklewell Lane, was my favourite: row after row of big glass jars containing aniseed balls, sherbet lemons, gobstoppers, chewy Black Jacks or Fruit Salads. Or there was a delight called a sherbet fizz, white sherbet in a yellow cardboard tube with a liquorice stick to suck out the sherbet. It usually got very messy because the liquorice would go all soggy. But the fizzy sherbet was a real buzz. Or you could get four Black Jacks (aniseed-flavoured black squares) for a penny that kept you chewing for ages. But if any kid tried to buy ‘just one Black Jack’ with a farthing, the request was usually greeted with a shake of the head. Everyone knew farthings were unacceptable – but of course, kids would try, just the same, if that was all they had.

  Despite rationing, sweet shops were as ubiquitous then as high-street mobile phone stores are now; the biggest and the best was on Kingsland Road, next door to the ABC cinema and opposite the 649 bus stop. It did a roaring trade once rationing restrictions ended. Amazingly, the site of the other nearest sweet shop on the opposite side of Shacklewell Lane remains there to this day, a newsagents and corner store nowadays surrounded by what were then big factory buildings, and now converted into trendy flats.

  It was a very big day in my sugarlustful world, when sweet rationing formally ended in 1953, the year the Queen got to wear her crown in public for the first time: as a reward for helping keep her in business, we kids got as many sweets as we could afford.

  It was a cold, wet February morning, yet I virtually dragged my mum down the Kingsland Road, past the market to a sweet shop next door to Sainsbury’s where, rumour had it, you could actually buy as many Crunchie bars as you wanted. But alas, the word had already spread through the streets of Dalston and beyond. By the time we got there, their stock of Crunchies had nigh on vanished. But even so, when we left, me triumphantly clutching the last two Crunchies in their purple wrappers, one in each little gloved hand, it was a memorable moment. Even if, for a greedy little chocoholic, two could never be enough: did I mention that one of the first baby words I uttered was ‘choc-a-choc’?

  By then, at around age 9, I was developing an avid reading habit, so the bulk of my ever-increasing pocket money, now half a crown (or two shillings and sixpence), usually had a focus beyond the sweet shop: buying books and magazines from the shops on Kingsland Road. Initially, the glossy picture books with Royals were top of my list, later came the weekly delight of magazines like School Friend. (The Silent Three were a favourite, three boarding-school girls who wore robes and hoods – early hoodies? – and went round the place doing good deeds anonymously.) Then later I developed the Photoplay movie mag habit.

  At the same time, when it became apparent I had such a hunger for books, my mum steered me in the direction of our two local libraries, one in Dalston Lane (small, but nearly always had an Enid Blyton I hadn’t yet discovered like Mallory Towers or The Famous Five) and a less-frequented one a bit further away in Farleigh Road, Stoke Newington. Jean Plaidy, who wrote many historical novels, became another big favourite. I devoured her books.

  Yet there was another free library for me at home too: my dad was a voracious reader in those early post-war years, a regular Daily Mirror buyer and a consumer of London’s three evening papers of the time. ‘Star, News and Standard!’ was a familiar sound then on every London street corner; Ginger would often come home and chuck all three on the sofa, keeping his work-related newspaper, Sporting Life, folded up in his overcoat pocket.

  My parents’ bedroom boasted a small, cheap wooden bookcase with a collection of paperbacks about the war, hardbacks too from authors like Somerset Maugham (Liza of Lambeth) H.E. Bates (Fair Stood the Wind for France) Edmund Wilson’s Memoirs of Hecate County (a naughty one which I flicked through, but didn’t really understand at that age) and Nevil Shute (A Town Like Alice). I didn’t read them all, of course, but later, the slightly more salacious ones like My Wicked, Wicked Ways, an autobiography by movie star Errol Fl
ynn written just before he died, were devoured. The one thing my childhood didn’t lack was access to reading material.

  On Sunday visits to my grandparents, I eventually found a way out of the boredom of trying to make conversation with Anthony by immersing myself in some very ancient copies of the Illustrated London News, a magazine which had been first published in the mid-1800s and copies of which my grandparents had obviously hung onto for decades.

  There were no outdoor activities to speak of. Physical endeavour of any kind was not my forte; I was a bookish, indoor kid. Anyway, there was nowhere to play. The street wasn’t fit to act as any kind of playground, though at primary school we’d play the traditional, fun playground games like hopscotch (I never got to play Kiss Chase, alas, because I was at an all-girls’ primary), and later on I learned the rudiments of swimming at the local baths.

  Unfortunately, I never learned properly. I was towed along on a rope by the teacher, splashing away merrily, but I never got beyond that stage which was a pity: on seaside jaunts, my dad, who loved sport, especially football, relished his annual bout of swimming. My mum would cheerfully pose for the camera standing in the water in a beautiful white bathing suit – complete with big earrings and watch – yet she never ventured further out to get wet or spoil her hairdo. Even the dancing lessons at Miss Betty’s were merely a part of the reciting/singing/showing off bit: I was never going to be a proper dancer.

  I was very much a loner. An only child learns a degree of self-sufficiency, of course, as a survival tactic, yet there weren’t many other children in my early world. At school, I didn’t start to really form out-of-school friendships with other girls until I was about ten: I was far too preoccupied with reading, writing, getting good marks and going to my dancing classes. The only other child of around my age I was more or less thrown together with on seaside holidays and regular visits to the Lane was Anthony, whose parents initially lived in the Lane so he lived through far more of our grandparents’ world than I. But there wasn’t much to draw us together; many years later Anthony revealed to my mother that as a timid, shy child he was quite scared of me. ‘Sometimes she’d kick or pinch me when no one was looking,’ was his recall of our relationship. Oh dear.