by Anwyn Moyle
Alan never did get called up for military service. I found out, from accidentally overhearing a conversation, that his family had paid a doctor to diagnose flat feet for him and he was exempt. So there was no chance of him being killed in action. I wondered why he was in such a hurry to marry me. Then I found out. After about a month of married life, he insisted I come with him to another gambling club, even though I didn’t want to because he’d only leave me on my own again and I’d drink too many cocktails. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The club was down a dark alley round the back of Regent Street. There was just a plain black door set into the wall and you’d have walked past it if you didn’t know it was there. Alan knocked slowly twice, then three times in quick succession. A viewing slot opened and a pair of eyes looked out. The man inside knew Alan because he opened the door and let us in. It was obvious to me that this was an illegal gambling den and the clients looked like a rum lot. I’d say most of them were villains of some sort and there were others who looked foreign – maybe Spanish or North African or even Indian – soldiers and sailors and pirates and pickpockets.
They all stared at me and scowled as I limped across the room, and I wondered why – hadn’t they never seen a woman with a hobble before? Maybe not. Alan kept me closer to him this time, as he went from table to table and won money at all of them. I wasn’t offered a single drink and Alan had to give me money to go to the bar. When I spoke to the barman in my Welsh accent, I thought the man wasn’t going to serve me. He gave me a look like I had the plague, but another man in a tuxedo nodded to him and he gave me the drinks. I was nervous in this place. They were openly hostile to me and they watched Alan like hawks. He was delighted with himself after winning and we left at 3:00 a.m., to the great relief of the ‘management’.
The next day I asked Alan why they were all giving me the evil eye in the club and he laughed.
‘Don’t you know the old saying?’
‘What old saying?’
He told me there was an old Gypsy superstition that had been bandied about for centuries in gaming circles – that a limping woman who spoke softly in the Celtic tongue would bring luck to anyone she was with. There was a rhyme associated with the superstition that he couldn’t quite remember the words of. He tried to say it.
‘It goes, “the girl who limps . . . speaks with a mysterious voice” . . . something like that.’
I knew exactly what it was –
The nymph who limps
With mystique speaks
In Celt clan teang
And moonstruck luck
Will stalk who walks
With she in chroí.
That was a rough translation that I’d read and I also knew that teang meant tongue and chroí meant heart or love in old Celtic. Alan laughed again.
‘It’s some kind of old folklore thing. I never took any notice of it before, until I met you. I thought it was a load of old cobblers, but it’s working for me.’
‘What about the others in the clubs?’
‘What about them?’
‘Do they believe it?’
‘Gamblers are the most superstitious breed of people in the world!’
They all had their individual rituals and lucky charms and would wear odd socks or a certain tie or recite words backwards or turn round three times – anything to give them that edge – that elusive piece of good fortune. I told Alan he ought to be careful, but he said what could they do, report him to the police? Some of the clubs were illegal and he wasn’t doing anything against the rules. Alan’s attitude was, they’d been happily taking money off him for years, and now it was his turn to take some of that money back.
Alan made me come to the clubs with him over a period of several months in the summer of 1942 and I came to the conclusion that he married me because he wanted a good luck charm on his arm. I was more of a mascot than a wife. Word was spreading that there was some kind of sibyl in town and each time we went out it got more frightening, with the management and even the other clients gathering round to see if the ‘lucky fetish’ would work one more time. And it did – until one night at an illegal gaming club off the King’s Road, Chelsea, that was later to become the Kray Twins’ Esmeralda’s Barn, when a couple of big bruisers came threateningly over to us.
‘Take your witch out of here, Lane!’
‘She’s not a witch.’
‘What is she then?’
‘She’s my wife.’
Alan wasn’t a fighter and we should have left there and then. But he was winning again and didn’t want to go. I grabbed him by the arm and tried to get him away from the table, but he pulled out of my grip and accidentally punched one of the heavies in the stomach.
That was it!
I went to the hospital with Alan. He had concussion and a broken nose and several cracked ribs. While I was there, I started throwing up violently and I thought it was the trauma of the fight in the gambling den. I looked very pale and washed-out and one of the doctors decided to examine me for injuries, even though I told him I didn’t have any. Alan’s mother and sister arrived on the sordid little scene and they glared at me as if it was all my fault and then went and lay across him in the bed crying, even though he was only half-conscious and I don’t think he even knew who they were. The doctor who examined me came back and called me into a room.
‘You seem to be all right, Mrs Lane.’
‘I told you I was.’
‘Apart from being pregnant.’
‘What?’
He told me I was about three months gone, which I should have known myself as I hadn’t had a period since April. But I didn’t put two and two together. I was naive for my age in matters of female bodily functions because nobody ever told me anything and I never read about it in any of my books. I left home to be a skivvy when I was barely sixteen and neither my mother nor anyone else had ever explained anything. The girls I met in service and in the pubs probably assumed I knew everything, because we never discussed pregnancy or babies – and I’d kept out of the lascivious arms of the young lads in the dancehalls. It meant I probably got pregnant on my wedding night, and that could be considered either lucky or unlucky, depending on what your definition of luck was.
Alan was allowed out of hospital after a few days. I told him I was pregnant and refused to go back into the gambling dens with him. What if I got hit and something happened to the baby? He pleaded with me, but my mind was made up – I was adamant. It was far too dangerous. It didn’t matter anyway because we were both barred from all the gaming joints in London, including the private clubs. News travelled fast in that fraternity and the legacy from his father’s will that he lived off was suspended, under some clause or other in the codicil. Apparently, old man Lane knew about his son’s gambling addiction and knew he’d blow the whole inheritance if it was left to him in a lump sum. So Alan was given an allowance on condition he didn’t gamble with it. Now he had to get a proper job as an accountant, which he was trained to be, at the firm of Douglas & Philips, where his father had been a director before his death – and he didn’t like it one little bit. His attitude towards me changed. I wasn’t his lucky charm any more – his talisman – his tau. He was no longer kind and considerate and he blamed me for getting him such a bad name in the gambling world.
His mother and sister firmly believed I got myself deliberately pregnant out of wedlock and trapped him into marrying me. They were Catholics, so he was stuck with me now and they started calling me the Welsh Whore whenever they thought I was within earshot. Alan never gave me any of the money he earned, which mostly went on the backs of racehorses and greyhounds, and he’d gambled away the savings I gave him for safekeeping. So, I was totally dependent on them in the house on Woodbridge Street.
I was moved into the spare bedroom and treated like a slave and wasn’t allowed to go anywhere in case I said bad things about them. As if things weren’t bad enough already! I was like Cinderella down in the ashes and the others
were like the two ugly sisters standing over me while I did all the work. But there was no glass slipper for me, my prince had already been and gone, and there would be no white doves coming to comfort me. I think they might have been hoping I’d lose the baby with all the hard work, but I thrived and got bigger and they came to accept it as a fact of life. That brought with it a change in attitude; it was Alan’s baby after all and a Lane by blood. So they started lightening my load. I was worried about having the child, as I knew nothing about babies being born and didn’t understand even the fundamentals of childbirth. I decided to ask my mother-in-law.
‘Can I ask you a question, Clare?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘How does the baby come out?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Yes, of course I do, but I just want to make sure.’
She laughed derisively.
‘It comes out the way it went in, you stupid girl.’
Then she walked away, still laughing. So much for the Welsh Whore handle! But I was still unsure of the actual physical nature of the process. I asked Alan, but he just snarled and said I should know about these things and it was nothing to do with him. The midwife would explain everything.
At 4:00 a.m. on the morning of 28 January 1942, my daughter Charlotte was born. I named her after Charlie Currant. And the old bat was right: she came out the way she went in. I had the baby at home and the midwife was there, along with Clare and Geraldine. They took the baby away from me as soon as she was born and I wasn’t even allowed to hold her. They said they’d taken her to be cleaned up and they’d bring her back, but they never did. I was weak because I’d lost a lot of blood and I wanted to sleep. I woke the next morning about 10:00 a.m. and there was no one in the room with me. I got up and made my way to the bathroom and had a wash and then went downstairs. There, in the sitting room, were the three members of the Lane family with my baby.
‘Ah, just in time, Anwyn.’
‘In time?’
‘For her feed.’
I was allowed to breastfeed my baby, then she was whisked away from me again. I complained to Alan.
‘I want my baby.’
‘You need to rest.’
‘No . . . I’m all right.’
‘Go back to bed. The baby’s being taken care of.’
‘She’s my baby, Alan!’
‘No, she’s my baby.’
And that’s how it was – I was allowed to nurse Charlotte and breastfeed her, then she was taken away by the ugly sisters. Alan told me I was Welsh Chapel and would be a bad influence on her as they were obliged to bring her up as a Catholic. They were afraid my Congregationalism would rub off on her – even though she was only a few days old.
‘But, I’m not really all that religious . . .’
‘That’s even worse!’
I realised Alan had only married me for my limp, which he saw as a device for his gambling scam. Now that he was persona non grata in the gaming dens I was no longer an asset. They wanted to keep the baby and I was useful as a wet nurse, not as a mother. As soon as Charlotte was old enough to go on the solids, I’d be redundant in that department too and I’d be relegated back to the role of domestic slave – or thrown out onto the street.
There was only one thing for it, I had to escape, and take my baby with me. But there was always one of them in the house, watching me. I had no money and nowhere to go, while they had influential friends that could make things difficult for me, to say the least. I decided to do it in the middle of the night, but first I had to get some money. Alan blew all his cash on the horses and dogs, but the old woman looked after the strongbox where he was supposed to have stashed my savings. Clare and Geraldine both had incomes from the father’s estate, so they were independent of Alan and let him do as he pleased with his own money. Geraldine always paid the bills. They didn’t trust me to do it because they believed I’d be off with the cash. I had to act fast. It was April 1942 and a year since I married Alan. I watched when the old woman went to the strongbox to get the money for Geraldine to go into town and pay the bills. She hid the key behind some books in the study. It was on a Friday and I decided to wait until the following Thursday; that would be the time when there was most cash in the box.
Over the course of the following week I planned everything carefully. The first train out of Paddington was at 5:30 a.m. and I went to the strongbox at 3:30 a.m. I found the key and opened it. There was a lot of money inside, but I only took the twenty pounds that was mine. Getting the baby would be more difficult. She always slept in a little open nursery area that Alan had built, with Geraldine’s bedroom on one side and Clare’s on the other. If she woke in the night, they’d call me to come and feed her. I had a carrying bag ready and I took my left breast from my blouse before sneaking into the room as quietly as I could. The baby gurgled when I lifted her gently from her cot and immediately clamped her sucking mouth onto my teat. Then I made my way slowly from the room. Geraldine stirred in the bed when I reached the door and I stood still for moment, not daring to move. She turned over and settled back down and I made my way carefully down the stairs, carrying the baby on my breast in one arm and the bag in the other. I opened the front door and closed it quietly behind me and was away down Woodbridge Street as fast as a frightened fawn.
It was a mild spring early morning and I waited until I got out into Clerkenwell Road before putting Charlotte into the carrying bag. She’d had her fill of mother’s milk by then and slipped back into a sound sleep. Clerkenwell Road was a main thoroughfare and I managed to hail a hackney carriage fairly quickly. We arrived at Paddington station just after 5:00 a.m., giving me time to buy a ticket and find the platform for South Wales.
And we were gone!
I arrived at Maesteg with my bag and my baby at 1:00 p.m. and I caught a lift with a lorry driver who was going down to Bridgend. He dropped me close to the village and I walked the rest of the way to our house. My sister Bronwyn answered the door when I knocked and she was so surprised to see me.
‘Winny, what a surprise. What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come for a visit.’
‘Come in. Come in.’
Charlotte started to cry in the carrying bag, it was time for her feed.
‘And who’s this?’
‘My daughter, Charlotte. Say hello to Auntie Bronwyn, Charlotte.’
Inside the house, my father was very ill and bed-ridden. The onset of emphysema had further deteriorated into chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and he didn’t have long to live. Mother was trying to be cheerful and smilingly glad to see me, but her face told the true story of her situation. And I felt guilty again. Every time I came home, I brought some trouble with me. And they didn’t need any more than they already had. Walter was married now and living with his wife and little son at the other side of the village. And Gwyneth was away at nursing college in Cardiff. Bronwyn was eighteen and working as a trainee teacher in Maesteg. None of them had followed me into service and I was thankful for that at least. I gave my mother most of my money, apart from what I’d spent getting away from London – and Charlotte and I settled into my old room, and I looked out across the hills again and wondered where I was going to go from here.
Chapter Twenty
Alan Lane arrived in Llangynwyd the very next day. He brought with him the sounds of the city and the smell of wrath and a solicitor from London and a police sergeant from Maesteg. My mother let them in and the sergeant took off his hat and smiled when she offered him a cup of tea. I got Bronwyn to take Charlotte out in the old pram we used when we were babies, while the sergeant introduced the other two to my mother. Bronwyn went out the back door so they wouldn’t see her. The sergeant was a jolly man by the name of Jones and he settled back in a chair with his cup of tea and a slice of barmbrack.
‘Lovely, Mrs Moyle. I haven’t tasted barmbrack as good as this for many a year.’
‘Would you like another slice, sergeant?’
; ‘If you can spare it.’
The other two had nothing and the expressions on their faces made them look like they were both constipated.
‘These men have come over from London with a complaint against your daughter, Anwyn.’
‘I’m Anwyn Moyle.’
All the faces turned to look at me as I came through the door into the room. The men all stood up. Alan scowled and glanced at the solicitor. The sergeant smiled at me as he settled back into his chair.
‘Good afternoon to you, miss.’
‘And what might the complaint be?’
The sergeant took another mouthful of brack and chewed it a few times before washing it down with the tea.
‘That you’ve run off with a baby.’
‘My baby!’
This seemed to take the sergeant by surprise, as if he hadn’t been given the full facts of the matter. He shot a stern look at the other two. Alan piped up.
‘My baby too!’
The sergeant put his cup down in a rather dramatic way.
‘So, this is a domestic dispute? I was led to believe it was a case of abduction.’
‘She also stole twenty pounds.’
‘Did you, Miss Moyle?’
‘Certainly not. It was my own money.’
Another glare shot the way of Alan and his solicitor, this one even sterner than the first. My mother refilled the sergeant’s cup and slipped another slice of brack onto his plate. Alan nudged the solicitor, who looked a little bit embarrassed by now. He spoke up.