Hellbent: Ces Waters & Me

by Margaret Wentworth

  At Stoke-on-Trent we disembarked and went to the town hall for corned beef, Ideal condensed milk and biscuits while we waited to be taken to our various billets. Mine was in the beautiful village of Keele in Staffordshire, first Banktop Farm for two days where there was no-one to play with, nothing to do and a million hens made a frightful din from dawn to dusk. Then to Ivanhoe, a large house on Keele Road, the residence of Major Hazelwood, who’d achieved distinction in World War 1 and was retired. The major had grey hair thinning on top and sported a grey handlebar moustache—a real Colonel Blimp. He lived with his cousin and kept the mansion spotlessly clean.

  The major and I got on like a house on fire, surprising because he expected high standards of personal appearance and hygiene. My clothing was worn and shabby, so he took me to Marks & Spencers and Woolworths in Newcastle-under-Lyne and bought two pairs of shoes, socks, underpants, shirts and jersies. I’d never had so many smart clothes. He insisted I go to church every Sunday. I fancied myself a singer and became a choirboy. I rang the church bells, which had a gentler ring than the ones in Manchester which put the fear of God into me. One Sunday, although the snow was exceptionally deep, the major insisted I attend. I wanted to please him so I trudged through it for an age. Only Frank Hanson and I from the choir arrived, and one young woman made up the entire congregation. Our voices echoed in the near-empty church and I felt a right burk, but the minister gave us each a shilling.

  The major had a parrot which I enjoyed aggravating with a spoon to make it screech but when he let it out of the cage I made myself scarce, figuring it would be out for revenge. He had a prize-winning Alsatian called David too. I loved David and we trekked across the Staffordshire countryside, unsuccessfully chasing rabbits.

  The soil was rich, crowned by a carpet of deep green grass on which contented cows grazed. Magnificent trees spread over the land, filled with fluttering twittering birds. Intoxicating smells wafted in the breeze. And I found, for the first time, my weak bowed legs could walk and run without pain. In the village everybody was quiet, clean and respectable, and they exchanged pleasantries in the street.

  The major had a large collection of books and was educated. He tried to educate me, to no avail. I suspect he was relieved when it came time to send me off to the local school.

  Miss Tenant, the headmistress, maintained discipline over her 40 pupils with a cane left in a bucket of boiling water on the fuel stove which kept the classroom cosy in winter. Whispering in class was met with her pulling the cane out and swishing it like Zorro’s rapier. ‘This doesn’t leave marks, so I’m not worried about anybody complaining about being hit. Who’s next?’ Silence.

  There were familiar faces too: the Keele choirboy Frank Hanson, Billy Russell with the testicle-kicking sister, and Ernie Richardson, stealer of dosser wedge cakes. But I became obsessed with Gwendolyn Lee, who passed our house each morning on her way to school, and she was keen on me. A year older, blonde, blue-eyed, she giggled a lot like most girls her age. I’d nip in behind her at the alcove where we hung our coats and washed our hands to press up against her and run my hands over her beautiful firm breasts. She wore nice tight dresses and I’d get worked up.

  From my desk I could look straight up Miss Myers’ skirt when she adopted this or that position, see her gorgeous legs, her frilly knickers secured by two buttons on the inside of her thigh. I’d slide down low to enjoy the view, fix the mental picture for the day and recall it at night during quiet masturbation. I always had toilet tissue handy; I knew the major would consider me a sex maniac if there were telltale stains on the sheets.

  There were two brothers at the school I didn’t like, because one fancied Gwendolyn. Roy and Billy Clifford also fancied themselves as boxers, and one day Roy started a playful sparring match. I hit out with all the force of a jealous male and ended up contesting a real fight with both of them. Ernie fidgeted among the onlookers. Quiet and nervous by disposition, Ernie avoided aggressive encounters generally, but on this occasion he came good and took on the older brother while I easily handled Roy. I was proud to see him hold his own. Bloodthirsty children screamed and shouted encouragement until a hush descended. Miss Tenant, cane in hand, had emerged from the doorway. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the corners of the classroom with our lips buttoned. I met the father of the Clifford boys, a coalminer-cum-farmer. He reckoned ‘If you give them what-for and they give you what-for, it will help you all grow up.’

  Miss Tenant was fantastic and took a lot of trouble with me and my learning difficulties. She promised me 2 shillings, a lot of money in 1939, if I learned my times tables but though I tried my mental block left me stumbling. She gave me sixpence. And she knew how to make me shine. She’d encourage me to tell stories in front of the class, and I made them up off the top of my head and rambled on. .

  Then David died. He was buried in the garden. I was sad—I’d lost a mate. So was the major. He offered his services to the army. That meant I had to leave too.

  I was re-billeted with Mr and Mrs Wally on their farm, where Ernie was billeted. Mr Wally was very poor. His heavy labour on a nearby farm earned him £3 a week. Stocky, muscular, he wore sacking round his legs and had grown a bushy moustache. His wife was very short, slight and wore glasses. The farm grew a few vegetables. There was no gas or electricity, and we’d huddle round a small battery radio under an oil lamp in his humble somewhat primitive house. Once, I fearfully stepped into the night to go to the outhouse in a nearby field with illumination from that lamp. Sitting on the rusty bucket I saw cobwebs I’d not seen by day and wondered where their makers were, until heavy breathing took my fear levels sky-high. It was clearly a monster. I would’ve stayed in the shack until dawn if the oil hadn’t begun to run out. I feigned a deep man’s voice. ‘Who’s there?’ Then I ran for it and rushed in the door. Mr Wally withdrew his pipe. `What’s to do, Cees?’ (He always called me Tees) I gasped it out. `That’ll be Bill,’ said Mrs Wally sweetly. Bill the bull.

  Weekends Ernie and I tried to catch rabbits. Every technique failed. On one expedition, we saw Gwendolyn and her friend Margaret playing on a haystack. Naturally, we sauntered over. We stood underneath the stack as Margaret slid down, hoping for an erotic interlude. The wind caught her dress as we expected it might, but I got an eyeful of her ridiculous bloomers, green-and-white chequered things, bolder than a tablecloth. I pointed and laughed till Ernie joined in. Margaret took off in a huff, Gwendolyn followed.

  Margaret told her mother who told Miss Tenant who called Ernie and me up before the class and asked me to repeat the rude things I’d said about Margaret’s knickers. There were sniggers all round. I tried to argue my remark was innocent, neutral, not meant rudely. Miss Tenant thought otherwise and withdrew the cane. Roy and Billy, I knew, would be glowing. I refused to bend over and we negotiated an extended hand. But I jerked my hand back as the cane swished to her table, and it broke a vase of which she was mightily fond. I got a caning from a male teacher who visited to provide a bit of masculine authority for the all-female staff, gentle compared to Miss Tenant’s hefty swipes.

  The radio news told of bombs falling on Manchester. This left me unsettled, worried, crying a lot and begging to be sent home. Mr and Mrs Wally weren’t keen but I kicked up such a fuss that, when Billy Russell was being driven home in a teacher’s Humber, I went too.

  It turned out Sylvia and Barbie were at home too. They’d got so homesick on evacuation in Congleton, Cheshire, they hitchhiked the 80 kilometres home, quite an undertaking for a 10- and an eight-year old. Mum and dad were living in Victoria Park, a posh area of mansions and lovely gardens, suddenly cheap because of the war. For 30 shillings a week they rented a spacious house with stained-glass door panels, four rooms up and three down plus kitchen, toilet and attic. A large room downstairs was sublet to a young couple and mum took in a lodger, the gaunt Regie Ward, friend and workmate of dad’s. His mother was dead and his father in the merchant navy.

  Regie taught me a lot about cars over
the years and we got on well. He seemed to have lost interest in soap and water because he would be back under a car soon anyway. He shared my bed a lot and I grew accustomed to the smell of sump oil between my sheets. In the end he stayed so often mum supplied him a bed. He became one of the family. Mum was forever taking pity on people, sometimes complete strangers, and if the couch was occupied they would share with me. Most drank, smoked and hadn’t washed, so stank of stale beer, tobacco and sweat. Those smells always repulsed me.

  Bombers had tried to destroy the docks and canals but most missed their target. A landmine on a parachute exploded near the Victoria Park house and every house on that street had to be demolished. Some residents were never found. Landmarks had become rubble. Dad and neighbours took turns checking air-raid precautions—blackout curtains in place and lights out—and kept their eyes open for incendiary bombs. They would have to extinguish the flames when these fell. One of the classic jokes of the war in Manchester:

  Air-raid warden: Get that light out!

  [Bombers were coming and sirens were sounding.]

  Old lady [putting her head through the window]: Sorry, officer, I can’t find me teeth.

  Air-raid warden: What do you think they’re dropping? Sandwiches?

  Later, after raids, we’d be told by air-raid wardens to look for people. Issued with a whistle, we’d blow it if we found anyone wounded or heard voices under rubble. Sometimes we found a body or saw a finger, a hand or parts of a coat among broken bricks.

  The whole spirit of Manchester was different. Women did men’s work, especially driving and working in factories. The men were all old, disabled or exempt because their work had war effort importance. Women outnumbered men in factories three or four to one. Many of the women were lonely because their boyfriends or husbands were away, and many had affairs. Returning servicemen were often angered to find their women had children by others, later also by Americans.

  But, that trip, mum wasn’t going to have me idle in the streets and sent me to St Pauls. They promptly sent me home again as I was off their roll and they weren’t going to bend the rules for this disruptive pupil. Mum enrolled me at St John’s but within a few weeks I was expelled.

  I was on the street when a large figure in khaki, greatcoat and gasmask over his shoulder, strode towards me. He gave the family whistle. Tony! He’d just returned from Dunkirk on 14 days’ compassionate leave. Sylvia, Barbie and I gathered round him at night to hear of his experiences. An officer told Tony to push a truck across a road to help slow the Germans advancing on Dunkirk. Tony said, `You push it across the road. I’m off.’ He shrieked with laughter. Obviously, such impudence was far more heroic than obstructing Germans. For his sister Nancy, the enemy was an emotionally confusing concept. Her German lover Leon Mailof had returned home to be a pilot in the Luftwaffe. She never heard from him again, assumed he was killed in action.

  I pushed mum to apply for me to go back to Keele, I don’t know why. I found it hard to settle down in Manchester, perhaps because of all the extra people staying, perhaps I missed my friends on evacuation, and I did miss the countryside.

  In Keele I was put on a farm with a Mr and Mrs Locker. Mr Locker, who permanently wore a cap, was a slim wiry man with a moustache. He was very nice to me. His wife was very thin and sickly. She suffered terribly from rheumatism and was always crying in pain. I took over many of her duties and learned how to milk a cow, feed the chickens, make home-made jam and get up early in the morning at the most horrible times.

  Many soldiers who’d survived the Battle of Dunkirk were billeted here to be reorganised. Some were in uniform, others in civilian clothing; they were a real mixture. They had all been in the water at Dunkirk and many had left behind their possessions. These soldiers were forbidden to leave the farm for a few weeks and were very frustrated.

  Lots of army vehicles were scattered around. I sneaked into the back of one and found a hand grenade, in another a loaded revolver. I wrapped these treasures in a shopping bag and buried them next to a cow shed. They are probably still there.

  Mr Locker employed a half-simple female farm worker, about 17 and reasonably attractive. This lass had probably never had a boyfriend before, yet all of a sudden she found herself with hundreds of admirers. She was dated by different soldiers night after night, wined and dined to excess, and usually ended up in the barn where they would ‘cattle’ her. I was fascinated. I would climb on top of a haystack and look down through an opening in the barn wall to see various soldiers beefing into her. It was a beautiful sight and when I watched them I stroked myself and fantasised. I heard the stories men concocted to get this lass on the straw. ‘Of course I’ll marry you.’ I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ By the time the soldiers left I estimated the whole regiment had gone through her. I think she rather enjoyed it. She walked with a sprightly gait, her eyes sparkled and her cheeks seemed flushed.

  Mr Locker’s shirehorse Big Jim pulled carts loaded with cut kale, thick stalky plants cut for winter cattle feed. I fancied myself as a cowboy, so crept into the stable, took the bridle, manipulated the metal bar between tombstone teeth and got on Big Jim’s back. He nuzzled my chest and snorted indignantly. The bridle was a bit skew-whiff but I flicked the leather strap across his great shoulders and said `Giddy up!’ Jim eyed me wistfully, slapped his tail across my bare ankle and plodded off, ignoring my reins. I was sitting high, feeling like the cowboys of Hollywood. Jim took me to the house of a farm worker at the back of Locker’s farm, where I dismounted and tethered Jim to a gate. `Ah, there’s that Manchester young ‘un,’ said the man and invited me inside. I was distracted by his white ferret and his big-breasted wife, Martha. But Martha glanced out the window and roared: ‘Garden gate’s gone!’ Big Jim had ripped the gate off and had galloped off with it banging behind him. ‘Get thee gone!’ growled the irate farmhand, and I got me gone, trailing Jim. Another of Mr Locker’s farmhands, who’d been looking for Big Jim and was in a bad mood stopped the giant horse and undid what was left of the gate. `What did you take horse for?’ I admitted I wanted to ride it. ‘OK, get up there,’ he said, lifted me up, and gave Jim a horrible kick in the stomach. He took off. I stayed on but it shook the tripe out of me. Jim headed for the stable. I ducked to enter and when I saw a low beam about to tip me off I grabbed it and hung dangling like Charlie Chaplin. Later, I faced an angry Mr Locker.

  Mr Locker was delighted when I asked him if I could go home again for a while. His enthusiasm to get rid of me was quite disconcerting.

  Luckily, I found a part-time job in Manchester, delivering groceries twice a week for a firm called British Traders. They supplied a bike with a huge basket on the front, adorned with a Union Jack. While bicycling the streets, my basket heavy with groceries, I saw a thin weedy ragamuffin about my age who went going around robbing gas meters. I pulled over and introduced myself to Stewart. He showed me a large margarine box full of all the pennies he’d collected that morning. He hid the takings under the floorboards in his house.

  One day he came to my house and handed me the heavy margarine box. Stewart asked if I could look after it for him. I looked at the heap of pennies and felt like a millionaire. There were always loose floorboards so it wasn’t hard to find a new hiding place for the loot.

  I quickly re-established contact with Ernie Richardson. Late one afternoon, Ernie and I heard the siren we called ‘Moaning Minnie’ and together with his mother dashed off to the air-raid shelter under the local library.

  On this occasion, we’d only been in the shelter about five minutes and were listening to the bump, bump, bump of bombs going off, when Ernie’s mum said, ‘Ernie, I haven’t got enough blankets. Will you go to the house and get some more?’ Ernie asked me if I’d come with him but I refused. Ernie told his mum he didn’t want to go on his own. She said, ‘Never mind, we’ll just have to do without them.’ Later, the all-clear siren went. Ernie and his mum just stared at the hole in the ground which had been the site of their house. The front of it h
ad been completely blown away, though the houses on either side remained unblemished. What was left standing was the end wall with the second-storey fireplace jutting out from it, way up in the air. It looked peculiar.

  These were desperate, dangerous times. Everything was rationed and there was a lot of blackmarket activity going on. Petrol was rationed. In order to enforce these restrictions petrol was coloured white for private usage or red for commercial vehicles. Red petrol was easier to get. The police did spot checks on private vehicles and would arrest motorists with red in their tank. Dad would cut the crust off both ends of a loaf of white bread, then pour the red petrol through the loaf into a can below. The bread absorbed the red dye and white petrol would trickle out.

  Dad had several jobs during the war. He interwove his mechanical experience with work of national importance which kept him out of the army. All dad had to do, if he had enough equipment, was to make things for the war effort such as bomb or aircraft parts. Dad was eventually called up and went to places like Transjordan in the Middle East. He arrived home with a wallet as a present for me.

  Dad had a succession of wartime girlfriends. Sometimes they would go motoring with him or accompany him down to the local pub for a drink. Dad’s most scandalous behaviour occurred when he paid for the funeral of one of his closest friends, Alice Percil, who died in childbirth. Mum was understandably upset about this.

  Dad flaunted an attractive 30-year-old blonde called Sylvia Dunham. My dislike for Sylvia (and the other women who snuggled close to him in his car or walked arm-in-arm with him down the street) burned away silently within me. Mum didn’t approve of dad’s infidelity, especially when it was done so openly. She’d sometimes protest and tell him to be more discreet. Such confrontations usually stirred up a hornet’s nest of buried frustrations.

  On Christmas Eve my mother went out to meet my father to wish him Merry Christmas, but she accidentally slammed the heavy front door so hard that the vibrations shattered the clear window panel in its top section. Their paths did not cross and my father arrived home. When he saw the broken glass, it put him in a foul mood and he stormed down the street. Mum was on her way home when dad strode towards her. She opened her mouth to say, ‘Merry Christmas,’ and he kicked her in the stomach.