by Yvonne Young
‘Oh, never mind.’
* * *
My best pal in Fleming Street was Sandra, who lived with her gran and mam in a downstairs flat. She was constantly in tears because of kids shouting after her, ‘You get free school dinners cos you’ve got no dad!’ Her poor mam did all she could to comfort her, but the damage was done, she cried for a while and then we went into her bedroom. There was a huge bed to which you would need a block and tackle (a system of pulleys) to climb up to. Sandra explained to me that she was going to turn the light off, then quickly switch it back on again, while I was to stare at the floor. When the room lit up again after about half a minute, the floor was covered in cockroaches (which were known to us as ‘blattas’). They immediately dashed for cover, leaving the floor clear again. This was the most horrific sight: how could she sleep in that room knowing as soon as it was dark, the little bleeders would be everywhere?
‘They aren’t from our place,’ she said firmly, ‘they’re from the family upstairs – they burrow through the plaster to get in here.’
Next day, she asked if I would like to meet the neighbours. The image of what I saw there has never left me: no carpet on the stairs and no painted walls. The sitting room had no carpet or lino, only bare floorboards, with one big table in the centre of the room and two chairs (I had heard of people burning the furniture when it got cold if they couldn’t afford coal). The mother was cooking soup in a large tin pan on the stove. The children and their parents all looked grey – their clothing, skin, everything about them, grey. The mother took the pan from the heat, placed it on the table and used a ladle to pour a spoonful into each bowl, but the soup looked little more than grey water. But this lady asked me and Sandra if we would like some. We declined, as it would have meant there was less for their poor children. Sandra said that the man had lost his job and the family were struggling. At one end of the table were towers of coins. She explained that they were for the gas man from the meter and when he collected the money, the family would be given a small dividend. They were waiting and depending on this meagre handout. I learned a lesson that day in kindness and sharing – and the injustice of hard-working men who were reduced to this when work fell off.
Sandra took me to the Team Valley Trading Estate one day, where all the factories were. I learned from her how to go on.
‘We stand out the back of the bakery and look in. Someone always comes to the door and gives me a cake or a pie.’
True to her word, this actually happened. As we walked along to the next place, which prepared cardboard packaging, we came away with some little boxes to play with. Further along towards the river, Sandra showed me the River Team – there were huge industrial wheels and cogs no longer in use, abandoned. This was very scary to me as she was climbing on things and I could see the oily water below so we left. Walking back to an office building, there was a skip outside, where we found carbon paper and lots of sheets of ordinary paper.
‘This will be great for playing offices.’
We gathered armfuls of the stuff and then noticed two men wearing business suits were staring at us:
‘Bloody scavengers!’
Sandra’s school was across the other side of the High Street. It was open throughout the six weeks in summer for children from one-parent families or whose fathers were out of work – at least they would have one hot dinner a day. She took me there one day and the sight of those poor children, well down on their luck, saddened me. I felt so guilty taking food that day when both of my parents were working. I never went back.
There was an old shop on the corner of that street and the owner let the upstairs room out to a Spiritualist group.
‘They will all be sitting around a table calling for the spirits to tell them stuff,’ Sandra said.
So, we went to the foot of the stairs and shouted, ‘Wooooooo, hooooooo!’ up there and then ran away.
Up and down every street, the women would pull sash windows up and lean on windowsills to look out the window up and down the street – we called it ‘Tooting on the neighbours’. Mrs Patterson lived opposite my granny and she would pull a chair up and sit smoking as she ‘tooted’. No wonder gossip got around. A new coffee had just been introduced and the advert featured a drum – ‘Boom bang-a-bang, Boom bang-a-bang, Patterson’s Instant Coffee!’ It was great fun for me and Sandra, singing this refrain with the window open, but with us hiding on the floor.
Les would say, ‘Little things amuse little minds,’ then walk out.
I used to invite a couple of lasses to sit in the front bedroom, where we told stories, but they always preferred mine from Benwell. Like the time when two lads went into a disused coal mine in Elswick and were missing for a week before they were found dead. Nobody knew they were there – they had gone in through the old wheelhouse with candles, matches, a pickaxe and a sack, the idea being to take some coal and sell it round the doors. Of course, the matches went out and they became confused in the dark, going deeper and deeper inside. A man I know called Matty who used to work tarring along Scotswood Road said that he worked for a company called Jobling Purser at the time, which was next door. He had heard tapping sounds and it made him shudder as he imagined it was ghosts of the lads, trying to find their way out.
They weren’t so keen when I told them of Dad’s brother George, a gunner for the Northumberland Fusiliers. He came back from France and couldn’t come to terms with what he had witnessed, so he blew his brains out with a shotgun in Granny’s house, where they lived in Elswick at the time. Dad had to sweep up the pieces of bone before she got home, but there was blood everywhere. Being born so close to the end of wartime, it was inconceivable to imagine the suffering of women, like my grandmother, who lost their sons in such terrible circumstances, or the lads who just went missing and were never heard of again.
I remember Dad was looking through the cardboard box on one occasion when he found a little green silk handkerchief, which he said Granny had sent him with a pound note on his twenty-first when he was in service. He admitted that he never read any of her letters.
Because Benwell, Elswick and Scotswood were going through stages of demolition, there were dangers all around: disused pits, breakers’ yards, old houses with no doors on and crumbling hearths. When industry was thriving on Tyneside all of the factories and ammunitions shops were fully manned, but industries were in decline. Now, there were holes in fencing and children saw these places as adventure playgrounds. The girls listened, enthralled, as I told how me and my pals climbed inside derelict buildings and scaled the walls around holes in the floor. I told them the story of how we dared each other to step inside the old church with its huge wooden, iron-studded doors hanging from their hinges. I wrapped all of this in bravery, but that day we ventured inside the old church is one I will never forget. The gaping hole in the floorboards flooded with water… Hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I think of it, but I gained kudos for that one.
Me and Sandra used to enjoy listening to the Salvation Army playing and singing in a circle right in the middle of the street on Sundays. But this didn’t please the working men:
‘The only bloody day in the week we have the chance of a lie-in and them buggers turn up!’
Of course, the Sally Army did so much for families in the area so nobody really minded that much. There was also a mission on Vine Street, just off the High Street, which Sandra took me to. She said that if we learned the names of all of the Books in the Bible, we would be given one of our own. My mam used to say, ‘You would go anywhere for a little apple,’ which was her way of saying I was up for anything free. We sat down in the hall and everyone began to sing,
Will you come to the mission, will you come?
Bring your own cup of tea and a bun.
We played games and had a good time, but then the reciting was to begin in earnest. I was able to remember: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth. First second Samuel, First second Kings.
; I got fed up and packed it in, so I didn’t get a Bible – Sandra did, though. Even to this day, in my sixty-sixth year, if anyone mentions the word ‘Bible’, I’m away at a gallop up until Kings. Recently, I was talking to someone who remembered the lady who ran the mission, Winifred Laver. She came from a well-to-do family in the South and had worked in a hospital, becoming a nurse and then a nun. When a position came up in Gateshead, she applied and got the job. At the time Gateshead had the worst record for TB and unemployment. Her folks were horrified and the family doctor said that if she went there, she would be dead within a year.
Sister Winifred held surgeries for families who couldn’t afford doctors’ bills. One little lad was at her surgery, suffering from a sore leg. Winifred applied a bread poultice and when he got outside, he ate the poultice – times were hard. She took children on trips to the seaside, fund-raised and gave food to needy families. Breakfasts were given to those who attended church on Sundays, so the congregation swelled during her ministry. She retired when she was ninety and died at the age of ninety-two. It was said that over four hundred people from all over the world came into contact with her as children wrote to speak of her kindness. I suddenly realised that she was probably there when I was attempting to get my hands on something for nothing.
Early one Sunday morning, as usual the sound of the Salvation Army belting out their music woke folks up for church. Around then it was also a common sight to see a priest at some kid’s front door – the child would escape from the back door only to be captured by another Man of the Cloth and taken off to attend Mass.
As I wasn’t from the area, this didn’t apply to me. The lane was where anyone who escaped the Sunday morning ritual would congregate. A baby was crying in its pram, so I went up the path through the backyard.
‘Your baby’s crying.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ said the father, ‘I’m coming out now.’
I followed him to the pram.
‘I haven’t got a brother or sister.’
‘Well, you can have her for two bob.’
I raced back to Granny’s.
‘Please can I have two shillings to buy a baby?’
‘What are you on about?’
‘A man in the lane is selling a baby for two shillings and I can have her!’
‘Go away with you! He’s only joking, man.’
‘No, he’s not. He said, really.’
I was fizzing that they wouldn’t believe me – they were wrong, he was going to sell her. Back in the lane, I waited until the dad came back out.
‘They wouldn’t give me the money, so I can’t buy her just now.’
‘Just as well,’ he said. ‘She’s not for sale any longer.’ Back indoors and in a huff, I was furious with the baby’s father but didn’t tell my relatives that they were right.
* * *
The betting shop was also on the High Street and one day, Les, John and Willy were listening to the horse racing on the wireless. Crouched around the marble-effect tiled fireplace, they pounded their fists on it as the race gained pace.
‘Go down to the bakery and get us eight pies, here’s the money.’
I decided to take my bike with me – I could hang the carrier bag across the handlebars on the way back. Once I had paid for the pies, the assistant put them on the counter wrapped individually in tissue paper (they had no carrier bags). So, I balanced each pie, one on top of the other, on the saddle of my bike and painstakingly wheeled it up the road. I had got as far as the top of the street when the front wheel kinked on a stone and every pie hit the deck. Hurtling into the room, I was in floods of tears. Nothing was said except:
‘Don’t take the bike this time.’
And I was given a shopping bag.
If someone strayed into crime or let themselves go regarding their appearance, people would say, ‘She’s gone to the dogs’ or ‘They’ve gone to the dogs’ so of course when my Uncle Willy was going to the hounds track on the Teams to watch the race, I imagined he was really far gone.
In the kitchen there was a dingy pantry with a tiny window, but they never kept anything in there except tins of paint. But the cupboard in the sitting room had plaster walls, which were always painted white. Empty pop bottles were kept in there and I enjoyed filling them to different levels to play a tune using an old metal spoon. While I was in there with the door open, I noticed a piece of flat wood with a piece of cheese on it.
‘What’s this?’ I said, holding it aloft.
‘Jesus, give that here!’ said Grandad. ‘It’s a mousetrap and if you put your finger in there, you’ll know about it!’
Grown-ups were always saying things that didn’t make sense.
My cousin Ellen ‘knew about it’ one day when she was helping to do the washing. Granny wasn’t feeling well so Ellen took over. Pushing the sheets through a huge iron mangle with wooden rollers, she picked up wodges of the soaking cotton to feed it through.
‘Mind your fingers!’ came the advice from the sitting room.
Too late, the tips of her fingers were crunched and Willy came rushing through to pull the rollers apart. The men had to finish off after that.
It turned out Granny was far worse than anyone expected: she had stomach cancer, and one day she was taken away on a stretcher into an ambulance, with Ellen hanging onto the side of it, screaming. Granny wouldn’t be coming back home. She died in hospital. The times were changing and I was about to be given the key to the front door at home, so not many visits to the Romes were on the cards afterwards.
When I returned home, I thought of Granny, our days at the beach and the times she and Mam took me to the cinema. Some of the films weren’t to my liking – Oklahoma!, for example. Jud Fry terrified me and I started to cry. But Mam wasn’t in the mood to interrupt her film simply because I was being a wimp,
‘Just put your head on my knee.’
Granny had been willing to leave, but was persuaded otherwise.
Another time we went to see a scary film about prehistoric monsters and I wasn’t about to be pacified and screamed the place down, so we were forced to vacate the premises. I wrote a letter to Granny telling her how much I missed her and if she could read it, she would know. How I loved to see her wearing her fox fur stole with its little black nose and beady eyes, how it appeared to be biting its own tail when she clipped it on. I placed the letter on the middle of the sash window, where it stayed for weeks (Mam wasn’t bothered about how clean the windows were as she was finding entertainment elsewhere).
A few years later, Grandad Rome died. I was in the room when it happened. He put a plate of dinner down on the table, staggered to the wall, pressed his hands against it in an attempt to steady himself, careered off again into the chair, which he made a grab for, but instead fell to the floor. I don’t remember what happened next as I was removed from the room. In those days adults didn’t speak to children or tell them what was happening so they formed their own thoughts and usually came to the wrong conclusions. A day or so later, I walked into the back bedroom and there he was, stone-cold white and wrapped in a sheet of the same colour, lying on a board between the backs of two dining chairs. The iron fireplace was like a wind tunnel, leading to the open elements – it sounded as if someone was howling all around me.
* * *
My first day at South Benwell Primary School did not go well. A classmate was celebrating a birthday and it was the usual practice in Class 1 for the teacher to celebrate by way of using a wooden cake. The birthday girl or boy would be called to the front, where they could blow out the candles. The teacher pointed to the ornate filigree ceiling rose above us, which she said was where fairies lived. One of them had provided a penny as a present. Where was mine? This wasn’t fair, why should this girl have a penny and not me? So I screamed the place down. I was sent to the headmistress. The door to her office had a tiny metal knocker in the shape of a lady wearing a crinoline and bonnet. I was asked to sit on the chair and I noticed an ornament on her desk: an o
ld-fashioned carriage with two little people inside. The Head noticed me looking at it.
‘Why are you here?’
‘I wanted a penny.’
‘And who sent you to see me?’
‘Miss Trotter sent me.’
She nodded towards the carriage.
‘You can play with it, if you wish.’
I spent a very pleasant five minutes rolling the carriage back and forth across her desk.
‘You can go back to your classroom now,’ she said kindly.
When Mam came to collect me, my coat was missing so she played holy war with the teacher. It was discovered to be in the house area. I must have taken it off after outdoor play and forgot – I was set to inherit Mam’s poor memory.
For the first couple of months I tagged along with any mother going in the direction of the school. It was on the lane at the top of my street so the journey was very safe. As I became more confident, it wasn’t necessary to stick so close to my adopted parent, so one day as I sauntered along, eating an apple, the older sister of a lass in my class snatched it from my hand and grabbed me by the back of the neck as she scrubbed it into my face. With nobody there to protect me, this was an extremely scary experience. I didn’t see it coming and I don’t know why she did it. Mam’s friend Irene had a daughter, Lynne, in the same class as this girl and when she found out, she grabbed her after school and bashed her all over the lane. I was never bothered by her again.
Usually, arguments were quite innocent slanging matches, such as, ‘My dad’s bigger than your dad’, but sometimes they grew more serious and we became involved in ‘Pelting Stones’ – a very exciting game until you were hit by one. Another danger was if you strayed into new territory and fresh dangers presented themselves, like the day me and a pal walked along a lane in Scotswood. A lad ran out from his backyard and threatened us with violence unless we sat on the path. This we did, but then he brought some broken glass and commanded us to sit on it. We were scared of him as he made a lot of noise, but on further reflection, there were two of us and he was smaller, so I stood up and said as loud as I could, ‘No, we won’t!’
