Vallance Road runs between Whitechapel Road and Bethnal Green Road for about half a mile and is roughly parallel to Commercial Street, which lies to the west. Number 178 was a terraced house with two rooms, a kitchen and a scullery downstairs, and an outside loo. Upstairs there were three rooms and out of two of them we could see the trains thundering along a raised track between Liverpool Street and Bethnal Green stations. When we moved in late that summer of 1939 it was just a humble East End house. But it was not long before Mum made it into a warm, happy and secure home.
With the excitement of moving, the outbreak of war meant little to the twins and me. We’d been told that enemy planes would be dropping bombs on to our home, but all we could see around us were sandbags being packed around public buildings, gas masks being handed out, and men in makeshift uniforms dashing about. When I wasn’t at school, I was playing football, running or boxing. The twins, coming up to their sixth birthday, spent their time either with Aunts May and Rose, Grandpa and Grandma Lee, nearby, or in Uncle Johnnie’s cafe across the street. If it was time to eat, they would be at home. They loved Mum’s cooking.
The twins were fascinated by Grandfather Lee’s stories of when he fought bare-knuckle in Victoria Park for a few shillings on Sunday mornings and whenever I knelt down to spar with them they shaped up like miniature prize-fighters. Even at six, they were tough and incredibly fearless, and sometimes they would catch me with a punch that surprised me with its speed, accuracy and power.
When the bombs began to fall and the anti-aircraft guns opened up, the twins showed no fear. They had always been content in each other’s company and in the Blitz that contentment deepened into security. While other kids cried in terror as the shells dropped, the twins just clung on to each other’s clothes and shut their eyes. And when Mum said she was taking us to the shelter under the railway arches they would toddle along unconcernedly, hand in hand, more excited than afraid.
But the East End in the Blitz was no place for kids, and soon someone somewhere decided women and children should go away until it was all over. Mum didn’t fancy the idea much; she had only just moved into her long-sought-after house. But as usual the twins and I came first, and she prepared for our evacuation. The old man wasn’t coming. His business was still booming and he needed to stay in London. He would be recruited into the Army, of course. But he had other plans for when his call-up papers arrived.
We had no idea where we were going. All we were told was that we would be living in a house in a country village, fifty miles further east of London. To many, the massive exodus from Liverpool Street Station that January in 1940, was The Evacuation. But to the twins and I, who had seldom left the narrow, crowded streets of Bethnal Green, it was An Adventure.
The village was Hadleigh, in Suffolk, and the house was a huge Victorian building belonging to a widow called Mrs Styles. After the cramped terraced house in Vallance Road it was a palace, and Mrs Styles went out of her way to help us adapt to the traumatic change in our lives.
I quickly got a job in the local fish-and-chip shop and later worked full-time as a tea boy in a factory making mattresses. The people there were friendly, but we didn’t have much in common and I missed the East End, particularly my football and boxing. The twins, though, were happier than ever. In fine weather they would spend hours scouring the fields and woods for miles around, revelling in the fresh air and boundless freedom of country life. When the snow came, Mrs Styles’s nephew lent me his sledge and I’d take the twins to the nearest hill. I’d lay full-length on the sledge with the twins on my back and push off. We nearly always ended up in a heap of tangled arms and legs, laughing. It was great fun.
Mum, however, was not enjoying being away from her family and friends. She never complained, but I sensed her unhappiness, especially when the old man visited us. He was popular in the local pub, with his news of what was going on in London, but he was always keen to get back after a day or two.
We’d been in Hadleigh for about a year when rumours of a German invasion on the east coast started sweeping the village. Mum got more and more worried until one day she announced that she was taking us back to London.
Mrs Styles tried to dissuade her, but Mum said she had given it a lot of thought and her mind was made up. Later, it was found that the rumours were unfounded, but by then it was too late: Mum and I and the twins were back in Vallance Road. I was pleased; I couldn’t wait to see my mates and take up boxing again. But the twins were not. They had fallen in love with the countryside and preferred green fields and animals to teeming streets and noisy traffic.
The old man’s call-up papers finally arrived. He’d made up his mind that he wasn’t going to serve, and promptly went on what was called the ‘trot’. He reasoned that he didn’t start the war, so why should he help finish it? The police called at the house from time to time looking for him, but the twins and I had been told to say nothing. Lying for the old man didn’t bother me; he was my dad and he’d done his best for all of us all his life. Now I was in a position to do my best for him, and I lied without so much as a blush.
It did affect the twins, though. Soon they started seeing the coppers’ uniform as The Enemy. Aunt Rose didn’t help: if she was around, she’d have a right go at the officers, four-letter words and all. If the twins were there, they would stand side by side, gravely taking it all in. Whatever they thought, they kept to themselves, but I had a feeling then, even though they were just eight, that they were beginning to distrust uniformed authority.
With so many men in the Army there were plenty of jobs, and I became a messenger boy at Lloyd’s in the City, within walking distance of Vallance Road. For five and a half days a week, I was general dogsbody for eighteen bob. In the old man’s absence, I wanted to do my bit as the man of the house, so every Friday night I proudly gave Mum my wages. She didn’t need the money, but she took it to make me feel good. Needless to say, I got most of it back during the week, one way and another.
Boxing now dominated my spare time. I went to the local institute for training three nights a week and Grandfather Lee fixed up a punchbag in the top back room of our house. The twins would watch me hammering away, and now and then I’d stand them on a chair so they could have a go. Mum wasn’t that keen on the preoccupation with boxing; she probably remembered her dad coming home from Victoria Park, looking the worse for wear after his bare-knuckle scraps. But when I told her amateur boxing was safe and the gloves were like feather pillows, she seemed satisfied. Anyway, she didn’t put up much of a fight. I suppose she thought boxing was the lesser of two evils: if I wasn’t down the institute, I’d more than likely get into bad company – or worse, start showing an interest in girls. Both had their dangers: if boys of my age weren’t breaking into shops or factories, they were going too far with girls and walking down the aisle almost before they’d drawn their first pay packet. I think Mum was secretly pleased that my only passion at that time was not for kissing the opposite sex but for belting the daylights out of the boy in the opposite corner.
I had not touched alcohol or smoked a cigarette. I was as fit as a fifteen-year-old can be. And then suddenly I was whipped into hospital with a mystery illness that was to terrify me so much I thought of killing myself.
It started with a sore throat. Gargling with salt water did no good, so Mum took me to hospital where doctors wasted no time taking me in. I was put in a bed and told to do nothing but lie still; I wasn’t even allowed to get up to go to the toilet. The illness was diagnosed as rheumatic fever and it kept me in that hospital for four weeks. The enforced idleness was maddening and I counted the minutes and hours between the visits of Mum, my aunts and my friends. Lying on my back helpless for a few weeks was one thing, but then I learned that I might become a permanent invalid with a heart condition. I was terrified. For someone so energetic the thought was too much to bear and it was then that I seriously thought about doing myself in.
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