Polly: Memories of an East End Girl

by Jeff Smith

  Polly’s two sons in the garden of Earlham Grove in about 1948.

  The upstairs half of our house was given to Mr and Mrs J who had lived just along by us in Keogh Road. They had one son named Reggie who was a teenager by then. Mind you, in those days we had never heard of teenagers; you just grew up from being a child to being an adult. Anyway, we had the downstairs half, which had a front room, a large kitchen in the middle, and a back room which opened through a conservatory into the garden. Our half of the house included the cellar, with its huge old stone wash-boiler in one corner, heated by lighting a fire under it, and the loo in the opposite corner. It also had a separate front cellar, which was once used by the maid but was now just an odds and ends store of stuff from whoever used to live there before us. Upstairs we used the front room as the bedroom, with our double bed in the middle and the boys’ beds in opposite corners on either side of us. The back room was rather grand and had obviously been the lounge, but it cost a fortune to heat so it was usually very cold and we didn’t use it much apart from high days and holidays. I remember that when we moved in the walls were covered in some awful smelling brown-stain that had obviously trickled down the wall. I think it must have been disinfectant or something. I suppose that says something about the state of the place before it was requisitioned but it didn’t bother us – we were just pleased to get a roof over our heads. It took ages to scrub it all off though, and even then I could always smell it but nobody else did. Maybe it was just my imagination. Our George slept in that room for a while when he was first de-mobbed and before he got himself settled down. But to all intents and purposes we lived in the kitchen, with its huge dresser all along one wall, a big pine kitchen table in the middle and a couple of easy chairs beside the fire. We only lived there for a few years, but we had some happy times and I still think of that as our first real home, perhaps because that was the first place where we had both boys and the family was ‘complete’. It wasn’t at all convenient and for baths we had to use a tin-bath in front of the fire – though heating water was such a pain we didn’t use it very much (Fred used to take himself up to the Turkish Baths once a week).

  Just after the war we still had rationing, but even when stuff was off-ration nothing was easy to come by and you had to make do. One year we decided to raise some chickens for eggs and meat and so we went down to the egg-and-chick shop in Angel Lane and bought some day-old chicks. You could actually buy day-old chicks from this shop – it had a wooden box display in the window heated by a light bulb and it was always full of little fluffy chicks. The boys used to be fascinated. Anyway, we bought these chicks and though some of them died pretty quickly we managed to raise a couple of them in the shed at the end of the garden. We didn’t have much success with the eggs so we decided that it was time to try the meat but, of course, this meant we had to kill one of them and we realised for the first time that none of us quite knew how. Well, we knew how, but none of us had the confidence to actually do it without causing the poor creature to suffer. At last my brother Bob volunteered to wring its neck and then, of course, we were all full of advice about how it should be done – how you had to be firm and do it quickly and strongly. The eldest boy was always a bit soft-hearted about animals and had got quite attached to the chickens so we had to send him off on some errand or something and Bob went to get the chicken. He brought it down to the garage and stood there holding the poor blighter while we all watched. At last he said that he couldn’t do it while we were watching so we all went inside and waited. Suddenly there was this awful cry of, ‘Mary! Mary!’ from the garage so we all rushed out to see what could possibly have happened. And there was poor Bob, standing there as white as a sheet, holding the chicken’s head in one hand while this headless chicken was running round and round his feet. He was absolutely stuck to the ground in terror and we were just as paralysed with laughing, until the poor thing fell down. Afterwards he told us that he was so concerned about not making the poor thing suffer that he had wound his arms round as far as he could with his hands round the chicken’s neck and then untwisted them round as hard and as fast as he could, but so hard and fast that its head had come clean off! We just had time to clean up the mess and hide the evidence before the eldest boy got back and we told him that somebody had stolen the chicken. I don’t know whether he ever put two and two together when we had chicken for dinner.

  Talking about having to make do, I remember when Reggie brought home his first girlfriend and Mrs J was ever so keen to impress her. Well, you couldn’t get proper toilet paper and most people, like us, just used squares of newspaper. Cutting up newspapers was a regular household job. Anyway, on this occasion Mrs J was ever so proud of herself because she managed to get hold of some air-mail paper. It might not have been proper toilet paper, but it was definitely a class better than newspaper. Sure enough, Reggie brought his girlfriend home and everybody was on their best behaviour, until Reggie went to the loo. A few minutes later he returned with a smirk all over his face.

  ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I know things are tight, but are we really reduced to this?’ And he held up a sheet of the air-mail toilet paper with clearly written across the bottom, ‘Please Use Both Sides.’

  You had to admire the Js. They were real working class, but understood the value of education and were determined to do their very best for Reggie. He eventually got a place at Reading University and they moved heaven and earth to support him through it; not an easy job in the days before grants. You could see them getting shabbier and shabbier as the days went by, but supporting Reggie was the number one priority and they really stuck to it. When he finished he got a job with that Harwell place, something to do with atomic power. They moved away in the late 1940s, to High Wycombe I think, and eventually we lost touch but I have always wondered what happened to them.

  The garage was quite useful because it was outside, but closed off from the road and under cover, so we could do any messy jobs out there and the boys could play there any time. The youngest boy used to love it because he was always into ‘making things’ and would sit out there for hours with some scraps of wood, a hammer and some nails, and just knock things together. He always knew what he was making, though it was honestly not always obvious to anybody else. For him, though, the garage was a smashing workshop and whenever I took him shopping we used to call in at Woolworths and get a quarter of nails – he would rather have nails than sweets – and he would then spend the rest of the day out in the garage. Of course, the boys were never fussy about the lock on the little wicket gate and used to run in and out without bothering and would leave it unlocked or even open. Fred used to get ever so worried about this and the danger of burglars so he used to make a performance about telling us to check it every night after the boys came in, or checking it himself if he was around. One night, though, he was coming home from work very late and decided to teach us a lesson by creeping in through the back and surprising us all in the kitchen. So as to heighten the surprise he didn’t turn the light on in the garage and crept through in the dark as quietly as he could until, that is, he stepped on a piece of wood with half a dozen nails hammered through it! He let out the most enormous yell and came hopping into the kitchen screaming blue murder about leaving such dangerous things lying around. As soon as he realised what was going on, the youngest boy also started screaming blue murder about his dad wrecking his model of a boat. I don’t know how we managed to keep them apart, but we never heard any more about security and the side door.

  The only trouble with Earlham Grove is that it was a long way from any schools and the boys had a long way to walk each day, especially as they didn’t like school dinners and so came home to lunch. About a year before we moved away they built a new school just up the road on the site where the V2 had fallen right at the end of the war and the youngest boy went there for a short while. I don’t think they were very pleased with him though. It was one of those terribly modern schools where they believed in all that self-expressio
n stuff and also that children had to be happy in order to learn. I suppose it was all very advanced at the time and the school was treated as a showpiece with all sorts of special visitors. Well, one day I got a note asking me to go up to the school and discuss our son’s progress. It quite shocked me because when I was a child your parents never had anything to do with school and I couldn’t think what was terrible enough to need a parent to be called to see the headmistress. When I arrived they sent for my son and in we went to see the headmistress. It turned out that they had had some ‘important visitor’ who had addressed the class and asked who was happy at school. All the hands went up, except one. So he tried the opposite tack and asked who wasn’t happy at school, and this time just one hand went up. This was such a disaster they sent for me to discuss the problems. They went through our home conditions, family background, and all that stuff – in fact, I thought they were very nosey – but still couldn’t find any reason why the boy didn’t like school. Eventually they asked him, and he just said that he would rather be at home making things so after that they used to let him take a hammer and nails to school and he used to sit in the corner of the classroom ‘making things’. He didn’t stay there much longer because we moved to the other side of Stratford, but when he got to his new school his teacher could only say that she had never known a child who was so bright but didn’t know anything!

  I must say that the Jews were ever so good about the children. They really loved them and were ever so kind. When the youngest was born I took him straight in next door to show him off. I was a bit shocked because they were having some sort of party and had lots of visitors. I tried to leave again but they would have none of it – instead they took the baby off me and he was passed around the room from hand to hand with lots of oohs and aahs. Several of them muttered over him in some language I didn’t understand – I suppose it was Hebrew. It got me quite worried after a while and I began to imagine all sorts of dark curses but he turned out alright so perhaps they were blessings! One Mother’s Day, when he was about five or so, he went into their garden and picked all their daffodils to give to me as a present. When I realised what had happened I wanted to wring his neck but they thought it was ever so thoughtful of him and managed to restrain me. They even gave him some leftover pieces of smoked salmon but I am afraid I ate them and told him the cat had pinched it. I think I earned it.

  One of his friends up the street was the boy Collins. He had some ‘illness’ – I think he was a diabetic – and the family were always ever so anxious about him. He was very rarely let out to play and they were always going on about the dangers of him cutting himself. However, he sometimes came to play with the kids in our garden. There were some old paint tins in the corner of the garage left by whoever had been there before us. Imagine my horror one day to find Collins and our youngest without their shirts on carefully rubbing grey paint all over their bodies. I must say, he was never allowed down to us again! Not that it did any good because he died a couple of years later and it cast a real cloud over our end of the street for ages.

  The youngest boy’s best friend was Martin, a Jewish boy who lived a few doors up the street. They were about the same age, but Martin had a baby brother. My boy seemed to spend most of the time up there, certainly a lot more time than he ever spent at home, but he always came home for his meals. Martin’s mother was really upset about this and got herself quite worked up. She even came to see me to say how much she wished he would stay and have a meal with them but nothing she could say would ever persuade him to stay. I said that I didn’t mind at all if he stayed so I would try to find out what was the problem. One day, I raised the subject with him as gently as I could but he wasn’t at all bothered. He just looked at me and asked ‘Have you seen Martin’s baby? He wears his dressing gown all day and he dribbles. I don’t want to eat anything near him!’ I was amazed. I never thought that he could be that fussy, but after that ‘Martin’s baby’ became the family code for any messy eater, food-spill, dirty clothes, or the like.

  23

  The Fog

  (1950–1)

  You don’t have fogs now like we used to in London. Well, they weren’t fog, were they? They were that awful smog, full of all the smoke from the fires in them. At the time we did not realise just how bad they were – in fact, nobody did but it is good that all this clean air law and stuff has sorted it all out. The kids used to get sent home from school early at least once a year because it was just too dangerous to be out. Well, I suppose the truth is that the teachers wanted to get home while there were still some buses around. It could truly get so bad that everything – cars, buses, trains, the lot – just stopped.

  I can remember one really bad night when I had gone over to see Ted. Now, after Dad died Mum had to get a job and at the factory she met this bloke Ted. He was only a watchman or gatekeeper or something, but they got on ever so well and eventually she married him. All told they only had a couple of years together but I think Mum was happier than ever she had been with Dad. They had a little house with a bay window and sometimes they would put a chair each in either side of the bay, make a couple of sandwiches and just sit there and watch the world go by. Once a week he used to take her to the pictures as well – my Dad never took her anywhere. I think she really was happy with him. Anyway, after she died I used to carry on visiting Ted and keeping an eye on him. He was a nice old boy; I can’t remember what he died of in the end.

  Anyway, this evening I went over to see him. Fred had some swimming meeting or other and he would be out until late so young George was babysitting the boys. It was a bit foggy when I went out but after I had spent an hour or so with Ted it had turned into a real pea-souper. And I mean a pea-souper – if you held your hand out at arms length you could not see it! Well, I was not going to stay at Ted’s, and anyway, I had lived in Stratford all my life so I knew the place like the back of my hand. I really did not need to be able to see to find my way home. No chance of a bus, of course, so I set out to walk.

  You could not see the ground, but I knew where the kerbs were, and all the side-roads, so I could just keep count as I made my way along. My plan was to get to the Broadway, because the kerb there was so high that it had been made into a double step. I thought that it would give me a check on where I was and also tell me where to cross the road. The church was on a huge traffic island in the middle of the road so there was one-way traffic round it, and that would make it easier to keep an eye open for any traffic because it would all be coming from the same direction. Not that there would be anything out and about in that fog. The other advantage with crossing in the Broadway was that it put me on the right side of the road to go straight down Romford Road without trying to sort out the road junction around Young & Martens. It was a bit complicated there. So, you see, I had it all worked out.

  Well, when I reckoned I had reached the Broadway I carefully stepped down the kerb and, sure enough, there was the double step. So I carefully stepped down again but it was much deeper than I ever remembered and I went absolutely sprawling. I suppose by instinct I jumped straight back up and turned round quickly to see if there was any traffic. Of course there was not, and if there had been it would have got me anyway. But by then I had absolutely no idea where I was. I had completely lost all sense of direction and could not even see the road under my feet, let alone know where the kerb was that I had just left. It put the wind up me something rotten, but I had to do something so I slowly headed off forward, not really knowing where I was going. Eventually I came to a kerb, which was a great relief, and I got back onto a pavement. But where? I decided the best thing was to try to find the buildings on the other side of the pavement, and because this time I knew where the line of the pavement was I set off at right angles to it.

  I was slowly feeling my way forward when I came to some railings. That absolutely floored me, because there were only shops in the Broadway, no railings anywhere. I felt my way up and down them. They had fancy tops on the spikes so I brou
ght my eyes ever so close up until I could just about see them in the gloom. Then I realised, they were the railings around Elizabeth Fry’s statue in The Grove. Well, that was a long way from where I thought I was, but it gave me a point of reference again so I was able to set off, knowing exactly where I was and what I was doing. I don’t know exactly what she had done for prisoners and prison reform, but Elizabeth Fry saved my life that night!

  From there on it was fairly straightforward for a bit, because Romford Road was just long and straight. I knew all the side roads so I could work out where I was, and because of the mix-up in the Broadway I was now on the right side of the road for getting home and would not have to cross over again. I had to pass the Conservative Club and thought that Fred would probably be in there by now, but decided not to go in to find him. It would mean crossing the road again and even then would take a bit of effort to find the club, at the end of which Fred would only tell me off for going out on such a rotten night. I am not sure that he altogether approved of Ted anyway. So I pressed on.

  Eventually I reached Atherton Road and turned down it. For some reason I didn’t feel nearly so confident down here, perhaps because it was not a main road, so I felt more ‘alone’ even though I hadn’t seen anybody else all the way home. I decided to cross at the top of the road and then walk along the kerb until I reached the pillar box. From there I would be able to work out the corner of Earlham Grove, which otherwise wasn’t very simple. I had just reached the pillar box, and was taking a bit of a breather to get ready for the last stretch home when a voice came out of the dark.