I was so excited. The Prentiss family had a grown daughter, Edie, who was a Land Army girl. They also had chickens, ducks, rabbits, sheep, and cows. This was a place with lots of activity, food, and smiles. Edie would take me around with her to feed the animals, collect the eggs, and help in the allotment where she was growing vegetables and fruit. It was heaven, and I loved it. I don’t recall how long it lasted, but it was over far too soon.
One day my Uncle Ern arrived. He was my mother’s oldest brother and he had three daughters who were too old to bother with me, so I hadn’t visited these relatives very frequently when we lived in London. We had no warning of his arrival, as there were no phones.
My mother was distraught to learn that our house had sustained much damage from a bomb that had been dropped in the vicinity. The ceilings had collapsed, windows had been shattered, doors blown in. People had boarded up the house for security, but my mother needed to go home to organize the repairs. I stayed on with the Prentiss family and was very happy to do so. But soon my uncle came back again to take me home to Romford. My mother had decided not to return to the Prentiss farm, so she and I were to risk life and death together.
I have memories of air-raid shelters, boarded-up buses (so glass would not shatter and injure the passengers if bombs were dropped; of course, if it were a direct hit, then it wouldn’t matter), ration books, food shortages, clothes shortages, coal shortages, petrol shortages, no sweets, no toys for Christmas, and no parties for birthdays. It seemed endless. I heard the expression “Before the war …” so frequently that I believed it must have been an idyllic, magical time.
At first, my mother and I didn’t have our own air-raid shelter in our garden. Neighbors had to share. I recall that when the siren sounded in the middle of the night, my mother would lift me out of bed in total darkness—we didn’t dare show a light—and carry me through the back gardens to our allotted shelter by the light of the moon (if we were lucky enough to have moonlight). I actually looked forward to this. I could listen to all the adult conversations, and I was still young enough to be fussed over. I recall one young, married couple saying they wanted to adopt me. That might have been fun, and I kept waiting and waiting …
My sophisticated, glamorous Auntie Lily used to come to visit sometimes. It was a long journey for her taking several buses and a train. Her visits were so exciting for me—a bright spot in my otherwise dull existence. I loved her so much, and it was clear she loved me. She started to bring me her old makeup, old high-heeled shoes, and sometimes junk jewelry—all my most treasured “toys.” My favorite pastime was to sit on a cushion in the corner of our living room with a hand mirror and make up my face, don the jewelry, and then prance around the room in her shoes.
There was some mystery attached to her that I couldn’t quite understand, and my mother would often roll her eyes when Auntie Lily was discussed. It was clear that some things were simply not talked about in front of me. Auntie Lily had one son, Alan, whom I had always known, but now there was another one, Len, who was a recent addition to her household.
Auntie Lily’s husband was Uncle Joe. As it turned out, the secret that was never discussed was that he was not her husband! She had done something that, generally speaking, no one did in those days. She had divorced Alan’s father, whom I hadn’t known at all, and was now “living in sin.” Len was her stepson, loosely speaking. Joe worked for the gas company, and our war-torn existence made his job vital; escaping gas from bombed buildings was hazardous, so his expertise was in great demand. I think Auntie Lily met him on a bomb site near her house. I also figured out that this was where a lot of the junk I was given to play with came from!
Auntie Lily arrived one day and said that she had come to see my father. The last my mother had heard, he was in Egypt; I believe he was helping to protect the Suez Canal. My aunt had seen a spiritualist medium—one of her favorite pastimes—who had told her that if she visited us that day, she would see her brother. She also gave us assurance that her medium had told her that her three brothers would survive the war unscathed. She stayed all day, and as evening approached, I was finally put in a stroller so we could walk with her to the station for her journey home. As we rounded a curve in the road, she saw a white sailor’s hat above the hedges and exclaimed, “That’s John!” And it was. I have been a great believer in psychic phenomena ever since.
My whole world was different when my father was home on leave. I was so special to him, and he spoiled me to bits. I had been drooling over a dress in a local store for ages. The whole bodice was covered in smocking in beautiful shades of mauve. According to my mother, it was too expensive, and we did not have the coupons to spare. She wanted me to have a white dress with a pink bolero, but I was a holdout! With much excitement and in positive anticipation, I took my father to see my choice. You know the rest of that story! I think I could have been developing a little of the divide-and-conquer technique, don’t you?
So now I was to go to school, even though I was still under five years old. We would probably call it kindergarten today. If I couldn’t live with the Prentiss family on their farm, this was the next best thing, as far as I was concerned. I remember running ahead of my mother on my first day. Change has never daunted me. I have always liked the excitement of new experiences and new opportunities.
I loved school from the beginning. I would do anything not to miss a day, and my lessons came easily to me. Going to school was a different experience in those days. We carried our gas masks everywhere—for children my age, they were red and looked like Mickey Mouse. Our classes were frequently interrupted by air-raid sirens, and many of our lessons were conducted in air-raid shelters. But we didn’t know this was unusual; we had never known anything else.
I recall one summer morning, during one of my father’s infrequent leaves, when I awakened with a terrible pain in my side. My mother had gone grocery shopping, and my father was digging in the garden. Somehow a seed had been planted in my psyche that illness was weakness, and I was expected never to be weak. If I fell in the street and was grazed and bleeding, I never cried. If I had to go under a dentist’s drill, I took it like a champ. That morning, I lay in bed, worrying that the pain wouldn’t be gone by the time my mother returned and that she would find out about it!
She did return home and called me to come down for breakfast. I couldn’t get beyond the top stair, as the pain was so severe. When I didn’t appear, she came to the bottom of the stairs to call again, and she saw me. I had to own up to my “crime,” and she called my father from the garden.
Of course, no one was angry with me, and they called a doctor. It didn’t turn out to be anything serious, and I was fine later that day. But I have so often wondered about my reaction, which was almost fear. I wasn’t supposed to have frailties, be a nuisance, or make a fuss. I wasn’t ever supposed to cry if I were hurt. I was supposed to be self-reliant and strong. I was supposed to be brave, not weak. And I was five.
I loved to go out with my father, and I joyfully skipped along at his side. I thought he was so handsome, and I recall telling him on one occasion that he was too nice looking to be a man and should be a lady. He laughed easily. I always encouraged him to stop for a drink in the local pub and was very willing to wait outside. I knew, of course, that he would bring out a lemonade for me, which was the big treat for which I was angling.
One time he brought home some bananas, the likes of which I had never seen. I desperately wanted to take one to school in my lunch, which my mother didn’t think appropriate. My father’s opinion was entirely different and prevailed. He said that if he put his life on the line on a daily basis fighting for his country and our freedom, it was okay if his kid were made to feel a little special one day in her otherwise deprived existence.
But then his leave would be over, and I was back to the routine of school, bombs, shortages, sometimes a Thursday after-school movie if the local theatre were playing something my mother wanted to see (I, of course, loved everything), and visiting a few relatives.
We went to see Uncle Ern and Auntie Lucy at their house in Beacontree one day. Their daughter, my cousin Doris, was home on leave from the ATS (the Auxiliary Territorial Service, known as the women’s army) and was in uniform, which added to the mystique.
When