by Beezy Marsh
By September, the mood in London had darkened, as the situation in Germany and the rise of Herr Hitler became the chief topic of conversation everywhere, from the pub to the factory floor. Annie and her friend Esther were quietly playing draughts at the kitchen table after work one day, while Elsie and Ivy took her kids out for a run around the park, to give her a rest. Meanwhile, Harry was absorbed in the headlines, which were enough to put the fear of God into Annie: HUMANITY FACES ITS BIGGEST CRISIS SINCE 1914!
‘You would have thought they’d all have had enough fighting, with the last war,’ said Mum, bustling about by the sink as Harry peered over the top of the newspaper.
‘He seems to think Germany’s got the right to have part of Czechoslovakia, but the question is, should we let him – and can we stop him in any case?’ he said.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I just think nobody wants another war . . .’ said Mum.
Bill sauntered in from the yard, his hands covered in oil because he’d been fixing Elsie’s bicycle chain for her. He put his tuppenceworth into the conversation: ‘If you’d told me after the war that we’d have all this bother from another German, I’d have laughed at you. We should have finished ’em when we had the chance, the rotten, stinking lot of them.’ He glanced over to Esther, who looked rather taken aback. ‘Sorry, no offence . . .’ he muttered. He got up to leave.
‘None taken,’ said Esther, shrugging her shoulders. She turned to Harry, who was listening intently: ‘You know, I’m not German, actually, although people always seem to think my family are. We’re Jewish. My grandfather was from Belarus. He had a good trade as a shoemaker, but the Russians were persecuting Jews like us, and the family saved money to get him to England before the Great War. A lot of families tried to give one person the chance to start a new life somewhere safe. He had ten brothers and sisters who helped him escape here. He never got over the guilt of leaving them behind.’
‘That must have been be terribly hard for you all,’ said Harry. Annie remembered Esther’s grandad then and how kind he’d been to both her and Vera.
‘My mum is still in touch with her cousins – she writes to them. We’re worried about Hitler and the Nazis coming, but they tell us they’ve lived through the pogroms under the tsars, so we mustn’t fret.’ She sighed. ‘I try not to think about it too much. I’ve suggested we try to get them to come over here, but no one has the money and most of them don’t want to leave their homes – and why should they?’ Her question hung in the air and Annie had no answer. She imagined for a moment, her family having to pack up and flee, leaving everything behind, travelling to a foreign country and starting again, from scratch.
Within a few days, the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had flown to Munich to meet the dictator, returning with an agreement that he said secured ‘Peace for our time’. Many people took that as a sign that war had been averted for good.
Harry wasn’t so sure: ‘We’ve gone and sold the poor Czechs out, giving Hitler what he wanted. It won’t be the end of it, you mark my words.’
Regular trips to the riverside in Richmond on Sundays became a real lifeline to Annie in those heady weeks, when it seemed the world was teetering on the brink of war. Harry was only too happy to accompany her. She felt a bit guilty that she was trying to escape the drudgery of factory life and the claustrophobic atmosphere of home, but just to have a bit of freedom again seemed to breathe new life into her for the week ahead.
One day, as they were strolling along, Harry spotted a pair of swans gliding down the river and caught Annie by the hand, to point them out. It seemed only natural that they should hold hands for a while as they wandered along after that, not that she’d tell her sisters about it because they’d tease her mercilessly.
‘Do you miss your family up north?’ she asked him, as he gazed into the distance.
‘Well, I write to them regularly, so I keep up with all their news, but I’ve been away from home a long time now, and I’m very happy down here in London, you see.’
She didn’t want to pry but she couldn’t help wanting to know a bit more. ‘Didn’t you ever have anyone special up there?’
He paused. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was away fighting in France in the war when I was a teenager and then it was just a case of finding a job when I came back, which brought me down here. I’ve always been into my union work, and I was just never lucky enough to find the right girl. Although, there is someone I’ve got my eye on lately.’
His piercing grey eyes searched her face. ‘Might you think it was very foolish of me to say that I’m very fond of you, Annie? I don’t want to spoil our friendship in any way, if it’s not what you want, and I realize I’m a good eight years older than you . . .’
Annie’s heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t been looking for a relationship with anyone after Stanley and Drury Lane, far from it. But love seemed to have found her; in fact, it had come round to her house and moved into their front room. She always looked forward to spending time with Harry and she had got to know him, realizing that behind his serious side there was a warm, funny and kind man, who she had grown to care about a great deal.
‘It is what I want, Harry. I’m certain of it, more than anything,’ she said.
He brushed some hair away from her face and their lips met, in a tender kiss.
They were frequent visitors to Richmond after that, enjoying the bustle of the riverside and the quiet of the meadows, where they strolled hand in hand. One sunny Sunday afternoon the following summer, he got down on one knee in the fields near Petersham and pulled out a stunning engagement ring.
‘Will you marry me, Annie?’
His eyes were full of hope, as she gasped at the sapphires and little seed pearls on the gold band. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. He must have paid a small fortune for it.
‘Oh, Harry, yes!’ she cried. He slipped the ring onto the third finger of her left hand and, as he swept her into his arms, they kissed. Everything that had gone before – the heartache, let-downs and loneliness – all faded away. There was only now, here, with Harry.
It was all like a dream; the gentle dip-dipping of oars on the River Thames and the chug of pleasure boats, music drifting along, people lazing on the grassy banks. Kids were still turning cartwheels as the sun set on a hazy afternoon by the water and they walked on together. It was idyllic; it was England on a hot summer’s day and they were just two people in love about to embark on the biggest adventure of their lives.
Epilogue
September 1939
The last of the wedding cake had barely been eaten when war broke out. Mum was wrapping a good chunk of it in brown paper and tucking it safely into a tin, to keep for those dark winter nights, when the news came.
Annie had just given up work, as married women were expected to do, when Britain declared war on Germany, turning their whole world upside down. Many of the men at the factory immediately joined up, but Harry, in his early forties, was too old for active service so he volunteered to be an air-raid warden. A gloom descended, with the BBC bulletins picked over and discussed at length with the family, who all feared what was to come and made regular trips up to Grove Road, to listen in.
Uncle Arthur had not long found himself a wife; a lovely widow from the Cambrian Laundry called Mary, who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. She was kind and caring with him and seemed to relish having a man around the house because she’d been on her own for so long after losing her husband in the Great War. They stayed with Aunt Clara and Dora, taking the upstairs rooms. ‘They’re no bother,’ Aunt Clara whispered to Annie. ‘It helps with the rent and they barely speak.’
George called round to Grove Road that night. ‘I’ve got some big news,’ he said, his green eyes flashing with pride. ‘I’ve joined up. I’m going off to fight the enemy, just like my dad did.’
Mum sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. ‘But . . . you can’t! What about your chest? Surely they won’t take you?’
/> ‘Doctors say I’ve got some scarring on one lung but I’m fine to be a despatch rider in the Army, because I already know how to ride a motorbike. Don’t worry, Mum,’ he said. ‘I can take care of myself. It will be fine. I’m doing the right thing, volunteering.’
Mum was crying, the tears of a mother fearing the worst for her only boy.
George looked a bit crestfallen and turned to Annie: ‘There’s worse things to be than a soldier, ain’t there? I know our dad would be proud of me, wouldn’t he? He gave his life fighting for freedom.’
Mum’s sobs grew louder and she glanced up at Annie, with a look of desperation and sorrow, knowing she could say nothing to stop him going away to fight. Bill stood up and put his arms around her and Elsie and Ivy went to her side: ‘Don’t upset yourself, it’s not good for your heart, Mum.’
Uncle Arthur turned away and stared at the wall, but his fingers started to rub at each other, relentlessly, and a muscle twitched in his cheek.
Annie looked around her. The blackout curtains were already tightly drawn and their ration cards were neatly stacked on the sideboard, ready for the next trip to the shops. Harry’s tin hat with ‘A.R.P’ painted on the front was perched next to a row of gas masks in cardboard boxes, which they had to take everywhere with them these days, just in case.
Annie knew then, that even the truth could not change what George needed to do, for his country.
‘Yes,’ said Annie, giving him a hug. ‘We couldn’t be prouder, George. Our dad was a war hero and he would tell you himself, if only he could.’
Author’s Note
All families have secrets.
My mother was Annie and Harry’s daughter and I grew up watching her carrying out painstaking genealogical research into her family to try to piece together the fragments she’d gleaned when she was a girl. Certain things were simply not talked about and as I grew into a very inquisitive teenager, I began to find out why; the choices made by one generation were sometimes deemed too shocking for the next to bear.
Looking back on the laundresses in my family, I feel a huge sense of pride. Learning more about the way they worked and where they lived brought home the sacrifices they were prepared to make, and I hope this book has gone some way towards bringing that to life. In a world of washing machines, tumble dryers and hot water from a tap, it is easy to forget just how long women had to spend keeping their families looking clean – not to mention all the other housework. But however tiring washday Monday might have been, it was nothing compared to the back-breaking, time-consuming and soul-destroying work in a laundry. I have one surviving photograph of my great-great-grandmother, the washerwoman Susan Chick, who was born in 1850. The photo used to scare me as a child because of her careworn, unsmiling face. Now I see it differently. This woman was extraordinary, pushing her handcart of laundry from Notting Hill to the mansions of Kensington and Belgravia to earn a few pennies more for her family, to help keep them all out of the workhouse. I am fiercely proud of my great-grandmother Emma Chick, who was, by all accounts, a very caring and strong woman, who faced everything that life could throw at her with a quiet but resolute determination.
I was fortunate enough to spend my earliest years in the care of Annie Austin, later Annie Dickman, my nanny, who married Harry, the union man from Newcastle upon Tyne. Her kindness was infectious. Some of my happiest memories are still of her and her half-sister, my Great-Aunt Elsie, who told me stories about growing up in Acton and working in Soapsud Island. They were like a bridge to another time and another world – the years between the wars, which have always fascinated me.
I hope you enjoyed this book. And you can be sure of one thing: the story doesn’t end here. I am busy writing the sequel, which will be published in summer 2019. Because in researching my family history, I discovered that Harry and his family had their secrets too . . .
The official Facebook account for all my book news is @beezymarshauthor and you can follow me on Twitter @beezymarsh. You can also sign up for book updates and all my news on my blog, Life Love and Laundry, at beezy-marsh.com.
Acknowledgements
Recreating a bygone era is never easy and I am very grateful to a number of people for their expertise and memories, which helped bring the years between the wars to life. I would particularly like to thank my Uncle John for sifting through his memories of Acton and our family at work in the laundries.
David and Amanda Knights and Maureen Colledge, of Acton History Society, were very kind to me and I would like to thank them for their help locating materials and memories to do with the laundries of Soapsud Island. The research of T & A Harper Smith, and their booklet Soapsud Island, detailing all the laundries from the area and lots of local history, proved invaluable. I am also grateful to Ealing Borough Council’s local history section for images and research materials on Acton’s laundries and local newspapers.
I was very lucky to be able to draw on the knowledge of Lou Taylor, Emerita Professor of Dress History at Brighton University, who taught me a lot about how working-class women dressed at the turn of the last century and the years leading up to World War Two.
I am grateful to Ingrid Connell at Pan Macmillan for being such a great editor at every stage of the process. It is a joy to work with such a professional team at Pan Macmillan. I would like to thank my agent, Tim Bates, at PFD for his unstinting support and enthusiasm for my writing and ideas.
Thank you to my husband, Reuben, and my boys, Idris and Bryn, for putting up with me while I spent months with my head in the last century. Likewise my friends Mark, Jo and Sally, who have had to endure me enthusing about various parts of the story, for what must have felt like an eternity.
Lastly, I would like to thank my readers, without whom I would have no audience. Thank you for picking up this book. I hope it transports you to a bygone age, and you are as gripped by life in a vanished London as much as I was while writing it.
Other research sources which proved invaluable were:
The Fabian Society, Life in the Laundry, London, 1902 (Fabian Tract No. 112)
Knights, David and Amanda, Acton Through Time, Amberley Publishing, Gloucestershire, 2012
Laybourn, Keith, The General Strike of 1926, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1993
Skelley, Jeffrey (ed.), The General Strike, 1926, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1976
Smith, Malcolm, Democracy in a Depression, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1998
Spring Rice, M., Working-Class Wives, Virago, London, 1981
Kemp Philp, R., Consult Me For All You Want To Know, W. Nicholson and Sons, London, 1900
Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell Shock 1922, reprinted by The Naval and Military Press Ltd., East Sussex, and The Imperial War Museum, London
I also viewed archive material, films and pictures from the following sources:
The Wellcome Library
Pathé News and Getty Images
British Newspaper Archive
The National Archives at Kew
Forces War Records
Acton Gazette
Internet resources:
North Kensington histories, for memories of Notting Hill in the early 1900s: https://northkensingtonhistories.wordpress.com
Brentford and Chiswick Local History Society: www.brentfordandchiswicklhs.org.uk
The Long Long Trail website, for background on World War One regiments: www.longlongtrail.co.uk
The Great War Forum: www.greatwarforum.org/
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Beezy Marsh is an award-winning journalist who spent more than twenty years making the headlines in newspapers including the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times. Today she writes fiction, as well as memoir and biography, and somehow finds time for a blog about her life as an imperfect mother to two young boys, in between tackling a never-ending pile of laundry and doing the school run. Family and relationships are at the heart of her writing and she is a firm believer that sisters, mothers and wives are the glue which binds everything together.
Also by Beezy Marsh
Keeping My Sisters’ Secrets
Mad Frank and Sons
Mr Make Believe
First published 2018 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2018 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-5098-9271-6
Copyright © Beezy Marsh Ltd 2018
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Cover Images © Getty Images
The right of Beezy Marsh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.