to set our house on fire with a box of matches.
I looked around at everyone and they didn’t seem to mind – but I minded!
The VE Day celebrations in 1945 had been and gone and still no Dad had appeared. But then in 1946 there was a national holiday commemorating Victory in Japan (VJ) Day and suddenly Dad was back, still in uniform. Immense crowds gathered in central London, and the rejoicing was universal. The lights were switched on in Piccadilly Circus and the Coca-Cola sign illuminated. We caught the Tube and joined the great congregation of people. Dad hoisted me up on his shoulders above the crowd to give me ‘a flying angel’.
I loved it. I was with him at last.
This was the first time I reckoned my father as a presence. Would I rush at him, throw my arms around him as Mum did with me? I had a sense of ‘Was I going to like him? Would I take to him?’ It was from both of us, Mum too, this feeling of reticence. Mum and he had to get their lives together after the war. There were to be no more babies – and what about sex? Neither ever spoke about it, and I guess probably never did even with each other. I had no insight into where babies came from: I must have lived in cloud cuckoo land. But I never thought about it. Why should I? We never lived in a sexed-up universe.
I’d love to have talked more to both of them, heard more about their experiences, for what had happened during the war would be with them for the rest of their lives. I never discussed with my mother how it had been for her, never questioned her, which I regret. But everyone, in spite of the extreme deprivation, had helped one another, and we knew what it really meant to be a neighbour.
So many people around us lived life without complaining, not fearing death or injury, and accepting one or the other when it came. Life generally was dedicated to a higher role, and it was rare for those around us to exaggerate their sorrows or miseries, or their survival.
But soon people retreated into themselves again and became self-centred, so that feeling of camaraderie after the war didn’t last long.
At the end of the same year, Christmas 1945, there were twelve of us at home, and I was now seven years old.
The Poplars Road crowd came to our house every Christmas. After Christmas dinner, for which Mum cooked the turkey – the first I’d ever seen – and after we’d heard the King’s Christmas Day speech on the Home Service – the first since VE Day, 1945 – we settled down to play games. One was called ‘Conned ’em’ (slang for ‘conned them’ and not to be confused with something that sounds identical!). Conned ’em had become a family ritual, and we played for money.
We divided into two teams, and to start someone would find a sixpence. The captain of one team placed the tiny coin of silver under the table, and then each one in turn held their hands under until the captain put the sixpence into one of their hands. Then, watched by the other team, they brought up both clenched fists. The other team took it in turns to guess, plump for a hand, and call out ‘Peace’ if they thought the sixpence was there. It sounds simple, but there were tricks and different calls, which was why it was called ‘Conned ’em’.
On this occasion the betting built up into quite a big pile of money. I disappeared under the table and started to pray I would win everything. They watched as I made my retreat, and as usual Raymond, my cousin, was looking very suspicious. I had a flash of instinct and knew who had the sixpence, so I came out from my hiding place and called out ‘Peace!’ at Raymond.
And that was it. I’d judged correctly: he had the silver sixpence and I’d won the pot. He was furious and stormed out of the room.
It was only much later that I discovered that Raymond was not Uncle Henry and Auntie Hilda’s natural son, but had been adopted. Even at a very early age I had a sense of my own entitlement in the way I was treated by Mum and Dad, and Hilda. I could see that Raymond was sort of humiliated in, or by, my presence. Even so, and despite the fact that he terrorised me somewhat – although not too seriously and certainly not traumatically – we spent a lot of time together.
Looking back I can see how there was a slight conspiracy in the family to protect me as someone different, not quite run-of-the-mill, something that in a way cosseted me as special, as if somehow they knew I was going to break the mould, but were not sure how this would happen.
Throughout my childhood, Mum would often be sitting at her Jones sewing machine, extending the life of worn sheets and towels by cutting and re-sewing the less worn outsides to form the middle. Until rationing was stopped in 1952 our allowance of clothing coupons, just over a hundred a year, made people thrifty and careful to re-knit jumpers which had been unpicked for the wool, and to save and cut down old suits.
Kids wore smaller versions of what their parents wore. Mum kept and stored everything that could be re-sewed or adapted for other use, and as a child I had just three sets of clothes, one for school, one for play, and one best suit. I ached for more grown-up clothes. Tea, meat, butter, sugar and footwear: all, too, were rationed.
No dishwasher, no washing machine: Mum did everything on her own. She never had a big wardrobe, and didn’t have many clothes. Yet as she worked in a store drapery department, and was the boss’s secretary, we always had these lovely materials around the home which she’d make into costumes for me, tasteful wallpaper or decorations, and plenty of knick-knacks, although these were rather kitsch. Otherwise there were net curtains in the front room to stop people looking in, and rich drapes. Very house proud, very clean, and while she was out at work during the day Mum worked hard in the home, but now when I look back I can see she was a terrible cook.
Dad and I would never complain, but her best shot was cooking a joint for Sunday lunch. Her Sunday roast was passable, although well done – and it would always be very well done. Later I would be able to say that she couldn’t ‘nuance’ a rare steak. For her it was just meat, and whatever the meat was – lamb, beef, pork – it came out the same. I remember her omelettes were always open, like Spanish ones, large and on the leathery side. Sunday afternoon teas were of tinned salmon, spam, cucumber, radishes, bread and butter; altogether our food was plain and wholesome. She wasn’t interested in cooking; she didn’t have time to be interested.
Mum spoke, like Dad, with an East End accent, but was slightly more educated than he was. She had been to Hackney Cassland Road School, quite a good school near where my other grandmother lived, and she’d even learned to speak a bit of French.
I had only ever visited this granny once, as a very young child, when I had some flowers – a bunch of anemones – pressed into my hand to give her, and I was waiting outside the door.
‘Can I take my flowers in to Granny?’ I asked.
Mum said yes and I marched boldly in with them, and laid them beside Granny on the bed where she lay asleep.
I
