Eventually, Mr. Richmond left.
Governess said, ‘Now we can get back to normal!’ This seemed to consist of our ‘forgetting’ nearly all that he had taught us and ‘doing things properly again’. It was all very confusing.
Daddy would come home sometimes and say that so-and-so had been ‘called up’ and he and Mum would look serious. I knew that this meant that they were going to be soldiers, but I had no concept of what they would have to face: it all seemed so far away. Life went on as usual at home except that a number of ‘the chaps’ were called up, which left my father and the few remaining men very busy.
Will I See Again?
It must have been at about this time that I developed eczema behind my knees and ears. As young children, we all wore ankle socks, which meant that the lesions behind my knees became dry and painful in cold winds, but that mattered less to me than the fact that they showed. And with my hair being cut relentlessly short, the ones behind my ears were also visible. It was not until my mid-teens that these lesions cleared.
At school it was either ‘Ugh’ or ‘Yuk’ that greeted me. ‘Is it catching?’ some of the girls asked, while others just told me to keep away from them. It made me miserable. But there was little to be done to clear skin problems then, other than using a very sticky ointment that ‘got on everything,’ said Mum, and did no good anyway.
The eczema, and frequent streaming colds, bothered me for years. When I was sent to school with yet another heavy cold, Governess would be cross and send me home because I was giving it to all the other children. When I got home, Mum would be cross because I had to stay home the following day, and she said that I was just fussing. She did not seem to see my streaming eyes and red nose and my shivers. However, at such times or if I had a sore throat or had had a tooth out, and could not eat solid food, I was given ‘pobs’. This was a North Country name for broken-up bread mixed with hot milk and sugar. It slipped down easily, was sweet and quite filling.
Grandma—Dad’s mother—and Aunt Lizzy had another recipe for people with colds.
Grandma used to say, ‘Give the child a good boiling of onions.’
This ‘good boiling of onions’ was her cure for colds, flu, coughs, tummy ache, constipation and a lot of other troubles. It was not as awful as it might sound, as they were big onions, boiled with salt and a clove until very soft, then served with a dab of butter, or margarine in the war, or perhaps gravy. They made your eyes and nose run, but this brought out the cold, according to Grandma.
When I was about eight or nine, there was a severe outbreak of measles and mumps. Most children got these diseases by the age of about twelve, as there were no immunisations against them then and antibiotics, although already discovered, were not in general use until the early 1950s. Hopefully, you just got over whatever it was, but sadly these childhood diseases were often fatal or had serious and permanent complications.
One morning, I looked at my hands and immediately went downstairs in my dressing-gown.
‘Mum, I’ve got spots.’
She looked at my hands and then into my face.
‘Oh, my! You’ve got the measles.’
The doctor was sent for. I was a bad case. I was to stay in bed.
Over the next few days, I got worse. I could hardly walk, I was hot and cold alternately, I couldn’t eat, could scarcely drink and the worst thing of all was that I could not see. I went quite blind. The doctor came and went, the curtains were kept closed and Mum had to lead me to the lavatory. I thought about Grandma and wondered if I was always going to be blind like her. This was frightening, but I was really too ill to worry about it. I think I was barely conscious a lot of the time.
The doctor seemed to be there a lot; various drops were put in my eyes, while some lotion was slapped on my spots. Mum was very kind. She washed me and helped me to drink some milky stuff, which was all that would go down my throat because the spots were even there. I was put in a darker bedroom because the light was bad for my eyes. Daddy came to see me every morning and evening.
Everyone must have been very worried about me, but, gradually, I began to get better and my sight returned, hazily at first but improving rapidly, and then I started to eat soft food.
I wondered if I had been almost ill enough to ‘go to see Jesus’ and, much more important to me, to see Mummy and perhaps my baby sister. Another thought came to me. Did Mummy know, away up there with Jesus, that I had been so ill?
The great day came when I was allowed downstairs to sit in the dining room by the fire in my dressing gown. Daddy had to carry me up to bed later because I was too weak to climb the stairs.
The illness lasted five weeks, and then I went back to school. Governess said I looked thinner than ever and should not have returned. A week went by, and I started to get a sore throat. The next day, I couldn’t swallow, and my neck seemed to have disappeared altogether. My face looked as though it were part of my shoulders. I had the mumps!
The doctor arrived again. I was a bad case once more. I had been run down by the measles. My throat was so sore I could hardly speak. More staying in bed, more milky drinks, more hot and cold feelings and one big worry.
‘Am I going to go blind again, Mum?’
‘No. No. This is to do with your glands.’
What were glands? I had never heard of them. But it didn’t matter: I was not going to be blind again!
Another three weeks went by, and I was deemed fit to come downstairs as before. This time, I tried to walk back up myself and was amazed to find that my legs would not work. Dad massaged them, ‘to get some strength back into the muscles,’ he said. I was given some nourishing white porridgy stuff from a tin, bought at the chemist shop, and gradually I got stronger and could walk properly again.
By this time, I had missed a whole term. I had not seen anyone my age while ill, and now I would not see any children because it was holiday time, with the isolation that brought with it.
But Mum had been nice to me the whole time, and I felt that made up for it.
Wartime Events
My memories of wartime events are probably fragmented and chronologically inaccurate; and, because of my isolation from any news of general events (I wasn’t allowed to listen to the wireless), my awareness was on a personal, childish level. Inevitably, I overheard snippets of grown-up talk and opinions, but no one explained anything to me, so some of my ideas must have been based on nothing more than people’s prejudice.
For instance, I overheard the grown-ups saying, ‘The only good German is a dead one.’ I was terrified by this language, so unusual in our home. In the playground rumours spread that the Germans ate the enemy’s babies and that British pilots who baled out over Germany were shot on sight. Of course, if I had been older and had understood more, this would not have seemed so unlikely, given the pilot concerned had possibly just annihilated an entire German family. I expect the same happened in reverse, when Luftwaffe pilots landed in our countryside. But everyone was encouraged to believe that ‘our side’ was above reproach.
The boys at school sang some very rude ditties about Adolf Hitler. As a young girl, and having no brothers, I had little knowledge of the male anatomy, so I thought perhaps all German men were different in some way from our own men. Later in the war I was understandably baffled to meet some German prisoners who seemed quite normal! Of course the stories that I heard about Hitler’s treatment of the Jews, whom I had previously only met in the Bible, proved to be all-too-true, but no one knew much about this until the war ended.
Dunkirk came and went, and the Battle of Britain took place. There was no possible way that I could have missed at least some of the excitement, as it was talked about by everyone. ‘Our boys’ were shooting enemy planes down daily over Kent. We lost planes too, but not nearly as many as the Germans. I heard all this from the boys at school, who listened to the news every day and discussed it with their fathers and grandfathers. The little playground behind the church school was full of roari
ng boys racing around, with arms outstretched, being aeroplanes. None of them wanted to be engine drivers anymore!
As children we had no idea about the fear and the horror the airmen must have felt every day. To us, and particularly the boys, the pilots were brave and clever, and the whole thing was wreathed in a sort of glamour. The idea that these terrific men might be afraid was impossible: we were encouraged to believe that fear was weakness. This was the way many grown-ups thought, too. Much, much later I realised that if these airmen were afraid, they had to be even braver to do their job and so still more deserving of our admiration.
No one went to the seaside anymore because gun emplacements were everywhere and rolls of barbed wire were appearing on beaches. Big round metal tanks, about twelve feet across and four feet high, called ‘static water tanks’, were placed at intervals in Bath and other towns. These contained water for the firemen to put fires out in the event of incendiary bombs being dropped. The water quickly became stagnant and filthy, but this did not stop the boys from boasting that they had been to Bath and ‘swum’ in them. The girls thought that was disgusting.
Big, important-looking buildings and some shops had sandbags piled halfway up the windows. To absorb the blast, Daddy said. I wondered why they thought the blast would only affect the lower half of the window: the top half was still unprotected. I supposed they had to let some light in, and so it was better than nothing. When I was told that people flung themselves on the floor if bombs landed in the street, I understood. Most houses had sticky tape across the window panes in criss-cross patterns so that if the glass was broken by the blast at least some of it would hang together and it would not be quite so dangerous.
Notices were put up telling folk to ‘kill that light’. The black-out had arrived! Mum made ugly black blinds for the windows and big curtains for the outside doors so that people could get in and out without showing a light—this was a punishable offence, which sounded frightening, even though I had no idea what the punishment was. Even smoking a cigarette outside at night was now a punishable offence.
More posters told us that ‘careless talk costs lives’. I was quite a bit older before I understood what it meant.
‘Dig for victory’ was the poster that most affected us. My father took this order very seriously, and every spare moment seemed to be spent digging up one of the lawns and planting vegetables. These spare moments were in the evenings: he was too busy in the daytime. I longed to help him, and, on the rare occasions that Mum allowed me to stay up a bit later, we dug and planted together. I always liked working with my father: gardening, decorating, looking after the various animals we kept. He did not talk much, but the silence was companionable. I was not afraid to talk to him. It was different from being with Mum. When she and I went shopping or to see her parents, I was always afraid that I would somehow say or do the wrong thing.
We began to see soldiers in uniform and others dressed as part of the Home Guard. For the first time, I saw people carrying guns. Even Daddy cleaned up the gun that he had used to shoot rabbits and said that he would be ready for ‘any Jerry who tried to get into our house’. It all seems so haphazard to us now, but no one knew what to expect. They only had the First World War on which to base their knowledge, and there had not been the same threat of invasion then.
I began to hear the word ‘conchie’ used with contempt. I had no idea what it meant, but it seemed to apply to people who would not fight. I got the idea that these folk were tall, yellowy and ugly. Why? They were also strange and cowardly, and some people were attacking them. I knew nothing about ‘conscience’, and ‘principles’, and ‘pacifism’. After the war was over, however, we began to hear of these so-called cowardly people rescuing wounded soldiers while under fire, driving ambulances in the bombing, digging trapped children out of collapsed houses. Then people around me went very quiet about ‘conchies’. So they were brave after all; they just didn’t want to kill people.
The period of the ‘phoney war’ seemed to be over, but ‘our’ war had not even begun. Where we lived was equidistant from Bath and Bristol. Both towns were to take a terrible hammering during the bombing, and while our village escaped lightly, we were on the noisy, frightening edge of these attacks.
But much would happen in my small life before those nights and days.
Hay and Fire
Meadow View was surrounded by fields. Sometimes there were cows in them, and I loved to see the little calves having a drink from their mothers. But more often they were kept for hay crops to feed the cattle in the winter. Haystacks were the preferred method of hay storage, and the farmer who owned the field bordering our garden built the stacks near the hedge. On nice days in the holidays, I would watch from the garden as the men tossed the hay onto something called an ‘elevator’. A horse, attached to a horizontal pole, would walk round and round in a circle, providing the power to turn all sorts of cogs or wheels to make the elevator go up and over to drop the hay on the top of the growing stack. Another man would stand up there, spreading the hay flat so that a house-shaped stack was eventually created.
I was very unhappy about the horse. He just had to go round and round and round for hours. Then I’d feel very angry because some boy, working with the men, would sit on the bar for a ride. Daddy said that the horse would not notice the extra weight, but I still worried that it made it more difficult for the poor old thing.
The first summer after we moved to Meadow View I used to stand by the hedge and watch the hay-making, and once one of the men (there were two or three grown-ups and several children) came over to the hedge and asked if I would like to come over and join them.
‘You looking lonely there all by yerself,’ he said.
‘Ooh yes,’ I said. ‘But … I’ll have to ask.’
‘Ah,’ he said.
I ran indoors with my request.
‘Of course not!’ said Mum. ‘I won’t have you mixing with them.’
I went back to the man.
‘I can’t,’ I said, sadly.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not allowed.’
‘Oh. I see. We’em not good enough, eh?’
The way he said it did not sound nice.
‘I … ’ I didn’t know what to say.
Mum shouted from the kitchen window, ‘Come away from the hedge. Just sit on the bench. They won’t want you bothering them.’
The man looked towards the window. ‘It’s all right, ma’am, we’d like her … ’
Mum had shut the window.
The man looked at me and pulled a face. I hoped Mum had not seen.
The bench was just like the ones you find in a park, and it was the only garden furniture that we had. Very few people had more than just a bench, usually placed on a lawn. There were no patios then; in fact, I don’t think I had even heard the word. Things like barbecues, patio heaters, garden tables and chairs, gazebos and sunshades were unknown, as were coloured pots and tubs. Gardens were mostly practical, for growing things, rather than for leisure. Lawns had to be mowed with a push mower—even folk connected to the electrical supply were unlikely to have an electric mower. I think there might have been petrol-driven ones, but they were few and far between. One of ‘the chaps’ was meant to come once a week to mow the lawns, but sometimes the grass would get very long and Daddy would eventually do it himself. I would ask him to make ‘paths’ of mown grass round and round and in and out so that I could pretend they were roads and run around them. Of course they had to disappear, as all the grass was soon cut.
So, on this day, I sat on the bench, listening to the shouts and laughter and watching the bustle. I liked to see them all when they sat in the hay to drink lots of tea from tin mugs and eat great big, thick sandwiches. I drew a sigh of relief when they unhitched the poor horse and gave him a drink of water from a battered bucket. To the children among them, it must have been like a picnic.
When the stack was finished (perhaps two stacks, if it had been a good year), it w
as left for a while to settle, and then a sort of straw thatch would be fashioned to keep it dry. When the winter came and the men started to use the hay, they would cut it out in big blocks from under the thatch until at last the thatch fell down and then that was used for animal bedding. Nothing was wasted in those days.
One year, after the haystack had been built, I was sitting in the garden when I began to smell burning. It had been a wet summer, and the farmer had not been able to get the hay really dry. The stack had been built too soon, said Daddy. We had seen steam rising from the stack when the sun was hot, but that particular afternoon I could tell the smell was different. I called Mum, who rang Daddy at the Works. He came home and rang the farmer. He arrived very soon afterwards, but the smoke was so thick by then that he decided the stack could not be saved. He was prepared to just leave it to burn itself out, he said.
Just then the wind changed and started to blow the smoke, and soon the flames, over towards our house. Mum screamed, and Daddy ran for the phone to ring the fire brigade. I was a bit scared, but very excited.
Soon the rattling red fire engine came clanging down the lane and pulled up beside the hedge. The men began to unroll the big hoses. They had to stand well away to hold them, as the flames and the heat were now very dangerous, so the water shot upwards in a big arc before landing on the hayrick, where it fizzed and spluttered.
‘Mildred, get a few clothes and anything important together. We might lose everything.’ Daddy was helping the men and shouted this over his shoulder.
‘Fetch your clothes, Julia.’ Mum was running up the stairs.
We gathered clothes and some photos and some papers, and Mum stuffed them in suitcases, putting them just inside the kitchen, ready to ‘grab and run if I say’, as Daddy had shouted. I made sure that Margaret was among my things!
At that time, people had far fewer clothes and other possessions than we do now, so a couple of cases were all that was needed for essentials.
The Country Nurse Remembers Page 8