by Alan Garner
I liked singing, and my grandma taught me Negro Spirituals, which she played on her piano. When Miss Fletcher heard about this she made me give a concert to the Infants after Prayers. I sang my favourites: ‘Poor Old Joe’, ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ and ‘All God’s Chillun Got Wings’. And then the choirmaster from St Philip’s church heard about it and he tried to make me join the choir. I went to choir practice once, but I didn’t like it, because I couldn’t read the music and couldn’t understand what he was talking about and some of the others in the choir kept changing the tune and I didn’t know which was right, so I didn’t go again.
A few times, my father came back from the pub with his friends, and if I was in bed he got me up to sing for them. I was shy, and the only way I could sing was to go behind the blanket that hung over the front door to stop the draught, and I sang there where I couldn’t be seen. I sang the songs we heard on the wireless, not Negro Spirituals. I sang ‘Toodle-uma-luma-luma’, ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’, ‘Ain’t She Sweet?’ and ‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’.
It was good when I sang behind the blanket because of the smell and the tickle of the doormat on my feet and the sound of the wind in the porch and through the letterbox.
One night, my father brought his friends home when the pubs closed, and they had bottles of beer and whisky with them, because my father had been called up to join the army the next day. He’d already said goodbye to my Hough grandad and uncles at The Trafford Arms.
I had to sing a lot of songs, and I got cold from standing behind the curtain and went and sat on a buffet by the fire to get my feet warm. I didn’t like the smell of the beer and the whisky and the cigarette smoke, and the men were talking and laughing loudly and their faces were red. They laughed every time anyone said anything, but I didn’t get the jokes.
One of the men, Fred Taggart, who lived down Moss Lane, wanted to go to the lavatory, and my father took him through the Middle Room to the Scullery where the back door was. He didn’t have a torch, and my father told him to follow the wall to the corner and then down between the Scullery and the coal shed to the lavatory door.
My father left Fred to it, but when he was in the Middle Room he remembered he hadn’t switched the light on for the lavatory. The switch was in the Scullery, so he went and put it on and then joined the rest of us.
After a bit my mother said she was going to make a pot of tea for herself, and she took the kettle off the hob and went to fill it from the tap in the Scullery. But she came straight back and told my father to go and see if Fred was all right because she could hear a banging through the wall on the other side from the slopstone.
My father was gone a while, and when he came back he and Fred were laughing so much they were holding each other up, and Fred’s forehead was bleeding and had to have a plaster.
What happened was Fred had felt his way along the wall in the dark and round the corner and down between the Scullery and the coal shed and had come to the lavatory door. He opened it, went in, and closed the door because of the blackout and felt for the light switch but he couldn’t find one. And then he bumped his head against the cistern and the light came on. This was because my father had remembered and gone back to the Scullery and at that moment he’d flicked the switch, but Fred didn’t know that.
When Fred had finished he couldn’t see how to turn the light off, and because of the blackout he daren’t open the door. So he began thumping the cistern to put the light out, and that was what my mother heard.
This made everybody laugh even louder, and they opened more bottles of beer, and I went back to bed, but I couldn’t sleep for all the racket, and I heard my mother go to bed too.
When my father joined the army the next morning, on Thursday, the sixteenth of January 1941, he left at twenty-five past seven. He didn’t want to be seen off at the station. He opened the front door and walked into the dark. My mother and I cried and held each other. As soon as the door shut and the echo of his step left the porch he was in the army, not here.
When he came home on leave it was the other way round. I heard his boot in the porch, and he tapped ‘Birkett-and-Bostock’s-brown-bread’ on the door; and there he was. For me, he hadn’t gone further than the dark. But now he had a number. It was 1768407; and he was called Gunner.
We never knew when my father was coming home. Sometimes it was a surprise. If he found he could wangle a pass for thirty-six hours, forty-eight or seventy-two, he caught the first train out of Rhyl or thumbed a lift. He didn’t pay for travel, because the ticket collectors at the stations wouldn’t take money from anyone in uniform. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did.
When he had official leave, we knew the day he’d be home, but not the time. This was because my Hough grandad and my uncles met his train and took him to The Trafford Arms. Then he came and knocked on the door, and I opened it and he gave me a kiss and a hug. The first thing I always asked was when he was going back, because I needed to know how long it would be before he went out of the porch again. Then, one night, when he hugged and I asked, he said he wasn’t going back. He’d been invalided out of the army because he wasn’t fit enough to fight. Before the war, he was a painter and decorator, and the red lead in the paint had poisoned his stomach; so now he went to work at Ringway aerodrome, painting camouflage, and had one day off every fortnight. He left home each morning before I was awake and came back after I was in bed, but I knew he hadn’t gone away, because he used the back door, not the porch.
My father home on leave, 1941 (© the author)
While my father was in the army my mother and I made a plan for the German invasion. I kept a bag of pepper by the front door, behind the blanket curtain. When the paratrooper knocked on the door I was going to throw the pepper in his eyes and my mother was going to hit him over the head with a poker and kill him. Then we were going to run upstairs and commit suicide by jumping out of the window.
One night, as we were getting ready to walk to my grandma’s to sleep at Belmont, I heard a knock at the door. I went to the curtain and asked who it was. A man’s voice answered in a language I couldn’t understand. I shouted to my mother, grabbed the pepper and pushed the door hard open to trap him against the wall; but he didn’t move, and the voice laughed and said, ‘Hold your horses, Sonny! I surrender!’ I looked, but there was nobody there; just the night. Then a torch was switched on and I saw teeth and the whites of two eyes. It was an American despatch rider leading a convoy of trucks through the village, and he’d lost his way. It was the first black face I’d seen.
He came in, called my mother ‘Mam’, gave me some chewing gum and some chocolate, and she made him a cup of tea. Then he thanked us both and tousled my hair, and he went back into the night.
Across the road from the porch was a street lamp. There was a metal plate at the bottom of the lamp post, but there wasn’t a handle or a latch to open it. Instead there was a socket with six sides. I found a stick that fitted and put it in and turned it, and the plate fell off. Inside were different-coloured wires, twisted and tangled and going into different boxes. I fiddled with them, but nothing happened, so I put the plate back and locked it with the stick.
When the war started, because of air raids the lamp wasn’t lit and that was when we had to have blackout curtains over the windows and the outside doors. The porch became a sentry box and I stood in it to guard the house from the German invasion.
I had a tin helmet and a double-barrelled popgun with corks on string. I stood at ease; then came to attention; then shouldered my popgun, marched across the road to the lamp post, about turned, one-two-three-away, marched back to the porch, halted, about turned, ordered arms, and stood at ease.
Then the Yanks came, and they stayed.
There were British soldiers in the village, but they weren’t friendly and they wore black boots with nails in them which made a crashing noise when they walked. There was one kind soldier, Wally Deacon, who was billeted with my grandma. He was quiet and had brown eye
s which always looked sad, and when I sat on his knee his uniform itched me.
The Yanks were different. They laughed and gave us comics and sweets and chewing gum and cigarettes made of white sugar with a red tip. When they were drunk they fought each other with broken bottles outside The Trafford Arms and Elsie Shaw’s chip shop.
One day, when I was ill, a sergeant called Mervyn arrived in a Jeep driven by a military policeman wearing a white steel helmet with MP on the front, and he called up through my window whether I liked aeroplanes. The back of the Jeep was full of scale models of wartime aircraft, painted black because that’s how they would look from the ground. They were used for aircraft recognition training, and he and the military policeman carried them to my bedroom and my mother hung them on sewing thread from the beams and I learnt all their shapes and names.
The Yanks’ boots were brown and soft and made a swishing noise when they marched, and their uniform and shirts didn’t itch.
When I was on sentry duty and heard them marching, swish, swish, along Trafford Road, I came to attention, shouldered arms, marched into the middle of the road, turned, presented my popgun and shouted, ‘Halt! Who goes there? Friend or foe?’ And the sergeant in charge ordered, ‘Platoon! Halt!’ and answered, ‘Friend!’
(© the author)
‘Advance, friend, and be recognized!’ I shouted.
The sergeant came to me, halted at attention and produced his papers from his breast pocket. I examined them, gave them back to him, and shouted, ‘Pass, friend!’ shouldered arms and went back to my sentry box.
The sergeant ordered, ‘Platoon! Forward … march!’ And on they came, swish, swish.
As they reached the porch, the sergeant ordered, ‘Platoon! Eyes … right!’ Their heads snapped towards me and the sergeant saluted as they passed. I slapped the butt of my popgun in return. Then it was, ‘Platoon! Eyes … front!’ and off they went down Trafford Road.
Then the sergeant ordered, ‘Platoon! To the rear … march!’ And the platoon turned, and came back up the road.
‘Platoon! Eyes … left!’ and the salute again. And the slap on my popgun.
The Yanks went. Their ship was sunk, and they drowned. From the porch, I kept watch.
Mrs E. Paminondas
Across the road at the end of School Lane were the school’s two air-raid shelters, side by side next to each other.
They were long trenches dug into the ground, with a roof built over and covered with earth and grass. At one end was the way in, down steps and round a corner. The corner was to stop bomb blast killing us. At the other end was an iron ladder going up to a short tube with a lid on top. That was the emergency exit, in case we were trapped and couldn’t get out by the steps.
Along the sides of each shelter were raised planks for us to sit on, and down the middle were slats for our feet. The shelters flooded, so our feet got wet. The only light was from the way in, but the corner made it dim, and most of us had to sit in the dark and we couldn’t see who was sitting across from us.
When the air-raid siren sounded the alert, we stood up from our desks and filed out in rows to the playground. Then we made a long line, two by two, holding hands, with the teachers at either end, and walked to the shelters. We didn’t run. There was no pushing allowed on the steps, and we couldn’t bagsy being near the light. We sat on the planks and waited. We could talk, but only quietly, in case we missed the siren for the all-clear.
It was hot and cold and sweaty and shivery at the same time. The shelter smelt of slugs, and we couldn’t help sitting on them, and there were live and drowned worms which the boys put down the girls’ necks until Miss Fletcher told them to stop. Miss Fletcher had a deep voice and blue eyes and silver hair with a plait of golden red fastened round. My mother said she’d cut it off when her fiancé was killed in The Great War.
Marina could hear the tiniest noise and was always the first to warn us of an air raid, especially when we were in Miss Bratt’s class and having Arithmetic, because Miss Bratt was deaf. The rule was that as soon as anyone heard the alert the whole school had to go to the shelters. The siren was on top of The Trafford Arms at the far end of the village. Marina could hear the brakes of the number 52 and number 29 buses at the stop outside Sammy Cohen Jeweller’s; and they sounded a bit like the siren. When that happened we often sat in the shelters for more than two hours, but Marina was never grumbled at. We could be sure it was a false alert only if Mrs E. Paminondas didn’t come.
We once had an Escape Practice Drill.
We went into the shelters when there was no alert, sat down and waited until a teacher blew a whistle. Then we had to climb the ladder to get out and escape. Denis went first because he was the strongest boy in the school, and could push open the iron lid at the top easily. Then we all followed, one teacher going next behind Denis to help pull us up.
The ladder was hard to climb. The sides were thin, and so were the rungs, but I managed, and it was good to put my face out at the top.
The other teachers came last, and the last in my shelter was Miss James. She’d been at the school for forty years and her coat was long and she wore a round brown velvet hat with a brim. And she got stuck.
We’d heard her grunting. Then her head appeared, and her hat was on one side and her skin all blotchy. I thought she looked like the Sphinx of Egypt in The Children’s Encyclopaedia, with the long mound of the shelter behind her and her head right at the end.
Miss Fletcher sent some of the Big Boys into the shelter to help. They found Miss James’s legs dangling in the dark and set her feet back on the rungs. Then they put their shoulders under her bottom and shoved. All that did was make Miss James shout. Her head was clear of the iron rim, but her shoulders were jammed fast.
The teachers bent down and talked to her, but nobody knew what to do next, and her skin was getting more blotchy.
Then Denis, who lived on a farm and knew how to move things, took over. He shouted down to the Big Boys to get a good hold of Miss James and steady her. He lifted her hat off and put it back tidy. Then he took hold of the iron rim of the tube and gently sat on the hat with all his weight. Nothing happened. He sat again, and bounced. Miss James yelled but didn’t move. Denis told the Big Boys below to hold tighter and began to bump up and down on Miss James’s hat. She started to sink. Her face disappeared and her voice was muffled. Then the boys below shouted. Denis stood up. Miss James’s hat was still in the tube, but there was no Miss James under it.
The boys brought her out by the steps. Her hair and its bun were down to her shoulders, her coat was muddy and her face all dirt. Someone gave her her hat. She put it on carefully, and told Denis he was a good lad.
I can’t remember a practice again.
When there was a proper alert we didn’t mind. Although we were sitting in the dark and the smells and the wet, Mrs E. Paminondas was coming.
We knew really that Mrs E. Paminondas was my grandma; but now she was someone else.
When the alert sounded she put on her coat and her hat with its long silver pin and set off from Belmont along Heyes Lane to the shelters.
My grandma, Mrs E. Paminondas (© the author)
She came down the steps and stood in the grey light, where we could see her, and she told us stories.
Mrs E. Paminondas had stories long and short, funny and frightening, magic and daft. We all listened, even those in Twiggy’s class. But she never told us about Half-Chick. That was a special story only for me.
She used to stop at an exciting part and say she was going to see how they were getting on next door, but she’d be back. And while she was gone, we had to think about what might happen next, and we’d see how right we were.
And she went to tell stories in the other shelter, and we made up the rest of the one we had. It didn’t matter if we’d heard it before.
When she came back she listened to what we thought, and talked about it, and then went on to the end, putting in some of our ideas, so each time it was differen
t. If the all-clear sounded and we were arguing with her, even if it was after school, we wouldn’t let her go and we wouldn’t leave the shelter until the story was finished. And Miss Fletcher said nothing.
The best story was ‘E. Paminondas’; which is why we called her that.
E. Paminondas was a boy who went to his aunty and she gave him a cake to take home. He carried it in his hand, and by the time he got home it was all crumbs, and his mother told him the way to look after cake was to carry it under his hat.
The next time he went to his aunty she gave him some butter. He put it under his hat, and by the time he got home it had melted into his ears.
‘Laws sakes, E. Paminondas,’ said his mother, ‘you ain’t got the sense you was born with.’ And she told him the way to look after butter was to cool it in water.
The next time he went to his aunty she gave him a little dog, and he dipped it in the river till it was cool, and by the time he got home it was dead.
‘Laws sakes, E. Paminondas,’ said his mother, ‘you ain’t got the sense you was born with.’ And she told him the way to look after a little dog was to lead it on a piece of string.
The next time E. Paminondas went to his aunty she gave him a loaf of bread. He tied a piece of string round it and pulled it. And by the time he got home it was all gone.
‘Laws sakes, E. Paminondas,’ said his mother, ‘you ain’t got the sense you was born with. You never did have the sense you was born with. You never will have the sense you was born with.’