Dorothy and Jack were not finding it easy either. Jack took a job as a long-distance lorry driver which meant Dorothy was increasingly on her own with the two boys. One day a three-year-old John shouted to his Auntie Beat, ‘My baby’s crying.’
‘Tell your mam.’
‘No, he’s crying for you.’
‘I’ll come in a bit.’
‘No. Now.’
Tucking her Sandra under her arm, she went over, to find his mother had disappeared. There was a pile of clean clothes from the wash-house on the table but Dorothy was missing, leaving the kids on their own. Rumours of her wayward behaviour became the talk of Stowell Street. She was frequently absent for a day or two. Sometimes she took young John out and about with her; he had to lie about people and places that she visited. On one occasion an irate woman caused a rumpus in the street, rowdily searching for Dorothy because she had dallied with her husband.
Eventually the gossip in Stowell Street became intolerable and the family moved to Dorothy’s parents’ house in Norman Grove. Grandma Thaw was incensed that they could leave their nice little home to crowd in with the Ablotts. She wanted an explanation and to see her grandsons. She stormed round to Norman Grove. Mr Ablott barred the way as usual. There was a shouting match, culminating in Grandma Thaw hurling a child’s scooter through the bay window. The police called by Stowell Street to investigate, but were won over by Mary Veronica’s homemade cake and dropped the case.
13 March
I was swimming in the crowded public pool and he was watching from the café up on the terrace, noshing an almond croissant. Suddenly he shouted down in his colonel voice, ‘I say, I say, excusez-moi, Madame – has anyone ever told you you have a ver’ lovely derrière?’ When I shouted back, ‘Bugger orf’ he spluttered with outrage to the startled French around him, ‘Good God, did you hear that? I say – that’s a bit uncalled-for, isn’t it?’
Dorothy was used to her father’s fights, but the boys were not. John solemnly swore to Ray that one day he would have a beautiful house with a big garden that had a wall round it that no one could get over. The fierce battles between Jack and Mr Ablott raged around them until, one day, the boys came home from school to find all their belongings dumped in the front garden. The family was off again, this time to a council flat in Wythenshawe. In the days of no cars, it was a long way from both families and, rows notwithstanding, the bonds were still strong. Girls went home to Mum to have their babies. Dorothy had gone back for the birth of both her boys. Jack’s sister Beattie had had her Sandra in her mother’s kitchen in Stowell Street with John playing whip and top in the yard. When the newborn baby was held up by the midwife he yelled through the window, ‘Yuck, a skinned rabbit.’ They missed all that intimacy, so within a few weeks they moved again.
The Kingsway Housing Estate in Burnage, an exemplary council venture, was nearer to their families. It was laid out in crescents and cul-de-sacs either side of Kingsway, which led up to both family homes. Like Bexleyheath for the Hancocks, it was a step up for the Thaws. There were green spaces, little gardens and trees. A man in Daneholme Road had, ominously as it turned out, been deserted by his wife and was happy to swap flats with the Thaw family. Compared to Stowell Street and Norman Grove it was paradise. It was the fresh start the battered family needed. The boys began to settle in.
But Dorothy did not. She gave a lovely party for Ray’s fifth birthday and shortly afterwards disappeared again, this time for good. Having toiled to make her happy, Jack cut her out of his and the boys’ lives for ever. Unbeknown to his father, seven-year-old John made one last effort to get his mother back. He dressed his brother and himself in their best grey flannel suits, and went round to where, with his inside knowledge of her movements, he guessed she would be. Their mother would not even let them in. She gave them sixpence each, told them to go away, and shut the door in their faces.
3
The Adolescent
AS AN EVACUEE IN Wallingford, I had little choice but to follow my father’s advice of ‘Keep yourself to yourself.’ The local kids hated us ‘bloody vaccies’. We overcrowded their schools and spoke a funny language they could understand no better than we could theirs. I was frightened to death of cows, sheep and horses and they were everywhere. I walked miles around fields to avoid them. We vaccies were considered dirty and undisciplined, which the local church school tried to cure by raking our hair for fleas and liberal use of the cane. My walk to school involved crossing a big field called the Crinny. There were strange, possibly prehistoric, mounds all around it. Here I would cower until the coast was clear and then run hell for leather across to the relative safety of the school playground. Sometimes a whooping gang would catch me out and then I would be jostled and jabbed and sneered at. At eight years old in a supposed place of safety I learned about fear.
One family in particular took agin me. I was a bit of a twitching wimp – fair game in a world where survival of the fittest ruled. There were a lot of Joneses – a veritable army of boys and girls, all with purple faces from their treatment for impetigo. I longed to be their friend and tried everything to ingratiate myself with them. I stood on my head, showing my knickers to the boys, and made daring jokes in class regardless of the rule to sit silently with your arms folded. Nothing worked until I too appeared with spots of gentian violet on my face and simultaneously had my fleas announced to the whole school and received the cane for biting the teacher who tried to dip my head in vinegar. Now I was one of them. From then on no one dared touch me or they’d have the Jones boys to answer to. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. My Dopey experience proved useful. I became their clown. We went stealing turnips together, playing kiss chase and sliding off haystacks and romping in the cowslips. The Gileses were never fussy about when I came home, so my life was wild and free. I began to enjoy the country. I lay face down on the grass drinking in the smell of the earth, listening to the insects and grasshoppers, feeling the sun on the back of my neck and knees. If I was sad I had a secret hillock where, if I ran down it as fast as I could, my cotton frock flapping on bare brown legs, my spirits would soar into gasping delight.
14 March
On the drive back from Provence stayed at lovely hotel at Moulin des Ruans. Banks of bluebells. Took us both back to childhood. Cycling out of town and bringing back bunches of bluebells with their white stalks tied to the saddle rack. Then putting them in jam jars and the perfume and the luminous blue lighting up the house.
Since El Alamein the raids had become less frequent, so, aware that I was getting out of control in Wallingford, my parents whisked me away from evacuation. Mr and Mrs Giles had lavished awkward love on me and made no demands; back in Bexleyheath it was not easy to settle into my parents’ more disciplined approach. In the Dragon Wood in Berkshire I had learned to stand up for myself verbally and physically. Thanks to the Jones boys I could land a nifty right hook. ‘Blessed are the meek’ had proved less effective than ‘Do that and I’ll ’ave yer guts for garters.’ My school report after I returned said, ‘Sheila is a born leader but must be careful to lead in the right way.’ This may have been a reference to my behaviour one day in Wet Break. A teacher caught me, stripped down to my serge knickers and liberty bodice, executing a frenzied improvised dance to the rhythm of the rest of the class clapping their hands and banging their desks. A shocking sight at a time when the Valetta and the Dashing White Sergeant were the usual dances at the socials in the church hall. My parents struggled to control me and impose some routine on my life.
We began to sleep in our own beds, only going down to the shelter when the sirens went. But Hitler had another little trick up his sleeve. Well, two tricks actually. In June 1944 the Allied troops landed in Normandy and began to take France from the Nazis. The same month, just when we thought it was all over, Britain had to contend with a mysterious new weapon. I could identify any plane by the sound of its engine – ‘OK, it’s one of ours’ – but this one puzzled us. A loud, deep, mechanical throbbing
sound which would suddenly stop, followed soon after by an explosion. These were Hitler’s V-1s that were christened buzz bombs or doodlebugs. The chugging, piloteless plane approached and, so long as it kept going, you were all right. If it stopped, everyone fell flat on the floor. We had just adapted our way of life to this when the V-2 or rocket came on the scene. Their approach was silent but they caused a massive explosion and extensive damage. At least with the normal air-raids you had warning and could take shelter, but these were lethally unpredictable. So off I went again. This time to Crewkerne in Somerset, accompanied by my mother to keep an eye on me.
I was billeted on a distant relative who was a medium and fascinated by my aura. I, in turn, was fascinated by a boy called Keith. I was ten and he was sixteen. My first real crush. I worked with him on a local farm for pocket money, heaving three hay stooks at a time into a wigwam shape and gleaning after the reaper had done its job. It was gruelling work, with the stubble cutting my ankles, and horrors such as the slaughter of rabbits that ran from the ever-decreasing circle of the machine, to be beaten to death by local youths. The things they did to cows were not pretty either. I bore all of it to work alongside my country lad. One day, sitting under a tree playing Truth, Dare or False, he said it was true that he loved me, frightening me to death. I ran off in a panic and then, to cover my embarrassment next time I met him, invented a twin called Wendy who was shy. I kept up this subterfuge the whole time I was in Crewkerne and came to enjoy being flighty one minute and inarticulate the next. He was completely taken in, due more to his gullibility than my acting talents.
Because of the war and my parents’ work I did not have holidays as a child, but while I was in Somerset I visited my best friend, Brenda Barry, in Dorset. She had been evacuated to an idyllic cottage on the cliffs above the sea at Langton Matravers. One night we were allowed to run across a field and clamber down the cliff to a rocky platform known as Dancing Ledge. In the middle of the rocks was a large hole which filled with seawater. When the tide receded and the sun shone, it warmed the water, leaving a perfect swimming pool. It was dark and deserted so Brenda and I stripped off our clothes and plunged in. We floated on our backs, hand in hand, naked in the velvet water, listening to the waves crashing beside us on the rocky ledge. No dragons here. Ablaze with stars, the sky that had rained bombs and bullets on us, now embraced us. We were at one with each other and the universe. Like running down my hillock in Wallingford, I experienced ecstasy, transcendence. People could be vile, but nature was kind.
The Americans were kind as well. I had never seen any except in films, but in Somerset the GIs were glamorously in the flesh. ‘Overpaid, oversexed and over here,’ said the grown-ups, who mocked their sloppy uniforms and marching. We loved them. ‘Got any gum, chum?’ would always bring handfuls of chewing and bubbly gum, Lifesaver sweets and chocolate. There being no shrapnel, I started a collection of American badges. These strange people were gentle, funny and generous. They too had been uprooted from their homes and they sympathised with us evacuees.
20 March
The new President Bush on TV news. Another one?! Reformed alcoholic, born-again Christian, eyes too close together and very odd arms, he makes me feel nervous. Seems to know nothing about foreign affairs but then only 8 per cent of Americans have passports so perhaps they don’t care. John says we must think of Singin’ in the Rain. And Mel Brooks and The Producers. You’ve got to love a country that can come up with those.
My behaviour was still fairly wayward, but despite my disrupted education (I went to seven different schools before I was eleven) my teachers said I was potentially bright. My mum and dad wanted a better start for me than theirs; both had left school at thirteen and been pushed into work to earn a living. They thought it worth braving whatever Hitler threw at us for me to try for a scholarship to grammar school, so back we went to Bexleyheath.
The exam for ten-year-olds sorted kids into streams. Grammar school if you could afford to pay or got a scholarship, technical college if you were not quite so bright, and secondary modern for the rest, an invidious selection system that blighted lives. Miss Markham reckoned that I could get a scholarship, but the night before my exam there was a huge raid. When the All Clear went, Mummy took me out of the shelter, shook the debris off her handmade pink satin eiderdown and let me lie in bed with her – a great treat – staring at the night sky through the holes in the roof. She psyched me up to determine that however tired I was, I would not let this one opportunity to better myself slip by. A few months later Miss Markham picked Brenda and me out of class and said that we could run home and tell our parents that we had won a scholarship to Dartford County Grammar School.
Everyone in Mitchells of Erith cheered me as I did the round of the counters with my news and then I waited outside Vickers’ gates for my dad. I knew he would cry and he didn’t disappoint me, stopping complete strangers on the way home to tell them about his brilliant daughter.
In 1944 the Education Act opened the doors of grammar schools to all free of charge, but in 1943 you had to pay and even though both my parents were working all hours of every day, we just could not afford that, so a scholarship was essential. As it was, my mother had to make my uniform rather than buy it. On my first day I was more nervous about revealing my homemade shirt and tunic than coping with Latin and Algebra.
18 April
First rehearsal of Peter Pan. Both pretty nervous which I remained all day. But John is so focused when he works that he has no time for nerves. He wants to get it right. Musicals are a whole new world to him but all the dancers and singers were wowed by his willingness to try anything. He keeps himself to himself, head in script, when not rehearsing but when he is he really goes for it and sets the pace. Poor buggers were shocked to discover he’s learnt it all – now they have to too. Not me, I am the narrator – well, that’s my excuse. The rehearsal room is opposite Heal’s. I’ll have to restrain him from refurnishing the whole house.
Not long after I started at the grammar school the war ended. The grown-ups went mad and we kids stuffed ourselves with junket and jelly, with evaporated milk as cream, at the street parties. Our neighbours arrived home from the battle front and prisoner-of-war camps. My support for the war was shaken by the return from Japan of the son of the Frickers who lived next door. He had been fond of me as a child and I was asked to try to get him to talk. This speechless wraith staring blankly at me made me realise there was not much to celebrate. Other friends had problems with the arrival of unfamiliar men in the family. My dad made me absorb what happened in the concentration camps. I still have a photo that he showed me of beefy women warders tossing skeletal bodies into a vast pit of festering corpses – ‘This must never happen again. It’s up to you.’
His faith was shaken. As with many people, the war transformed his attitude. His generation had trusted their leaders to know best, even after the leadership of the ‘donkeys’ in World War I. The examples of Hitler and Mussolini shook Europe. Their ugly deaths underlined the squalor of their regimes and the unbelievable idiocy of those who followed them like sheep. Unlike many, Dad believed it could happen here if you didn’t ask questions. Exhausted by a war in which fifty million died, no one seemed to question or oppose President Truman when he threatened that the US would ‘unleash a reign of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth’. So he did it. Twice. The atom bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed and maimed civilians. And the world was irrevocably changed.
The enormity of the atom bomb was difficult for a twelve-year-old to grasp. It terrified me, especially when, a couple of years after the war, my school sent me to a family near La Rochelle to improve my French. They took me to see Royan. I kept a diary of the trip for my dad.
13 August 1947
In 1940–41 just before the French surrendered, our planes suddenly came upon Royan. For two hours there was hell on earth after which the whole town was razed to the ground. When I say the whole town I mean it. I have
never seen anything so awful in all my life. It’s the bomb damage we are used to increased by a hundred times. Like an atom bomb, I suppose. You could stand and look at miles and miles of ruin. Thousands of people were killed, hardly any survived in fact. All this would not be so terrible if it had been to some purpose but it wasn’t. The British have admitted it was a terrible mistake. There are notices up saying, in French, THIS TOWN WAS DESTROYED BY MISTAKE. It was done two days before the surrender. I don’t know how they could ever forgive us. I was awfully glad to leave the town. It had a terrible atmosphere of death. I stood for some time looking at the white stones strewn on the ground with odd walls silhouetted against that blue sky. I had the sort of feeling we used to get after a raid when we looked at the damage. I would like to take all the politicians and war mongerers to that place and say, look, this is the sort of thing you are responsible for. You ruin beauty, you kill – we ordinary folk are the ones to suffer. Why don’t you grow up and realise what’s at stake?
A mite pompous, even for a fourteen-year-old, but it shows the beginnings of my commitment to pacifism.
In July 1945 the ‘ordinary folk’ made their voices heard. Much as they loved the charismatic Churchill and were grateful to him, he was rejected for the ordinary Attlee, whose quietly confident assertion, ‘We are facing a new era. Labour can deliver the goods’ won a landslide victory. The Labour Government was led by visionaries, some, like Aneurin Bevan, from the working class, in itself a revolutionary concept in government. A colourful knockabout started between the old guard and the new. Churchill called Bevan ‘a squalid nuisance’, and Bevan called the Tories ‘lower than vermin’. The Labour Party achieved change in all areas of life. In a few short years, my parents’ burden of worry over illness, old age and education was considerably lightened. The new Labour Government founded the Welfare State.
The Two of Us Page 4