Cobbled Streets and Penny Sweets--Happy Times and Hardship in Post-War Britain

by Yvonne Young

  Dad met up with some people who he saw every year: a father and son, John and Robert from Nottingham, and a woman called Harriet from Holmfirth, his favourite place. He wrote regularly to Harriet, they were all firm friends. He introduced Margaret to them, and after that, they all met every year.

  Margaret invited him to stay at her house – she sent him a letter with a hand-drawn map of how to get to her home from the bus station. Dad was on his best behaviour, sat there like Peter Rabbit: he had arrived, he was in Last of the Summer Wine country! He came back describing how the food she cooked was superb and how he was saving all his pension for when he got back home. He also noted that her son liked Star Trek – now that wouldn’t please him at all because he would want to watch his programmes as he did at home: Dad’s Army, Last of the Summer Wine, etc. Only he would know not to rock the boat. We never saw or heard from him around then – he was in his element, staying for six weeks at a time. We also knew that he would never put his hand in his pocket and if he did, the moths would have escaped! I could imagine the scenarios:

  ‘Can I give you something for these theatre tickets? Oh, alright then, if you’re sure.’ The hand would be rapidly withdrawn from the pocket and nothing more said.

  He visited the local swimming baths and went to recitals, where Margaret, being a retired music teacher, played and sang; they also attended operatic society dos and the mixed Probus club for retired or semi-retired folk. They went on holiday regularly, mostly with the people from Doncaster and Huddersfield, who he had met on previous holidays to Butlins. I was really surprised at this because he had never shown any interest in meeting up with other folk, but this was only twice a year and he would have been on his best behaviour. They arranged to meet at Canterbury on one of their holidays, and agreed to take their passports; they travelled to Dover after a few days in Canterbury and took the ferry to France. Other jaunts included a Turkey and Tinsel five-day tour, the Grand Hotel at Scarborough and Blackpool Butlins hotel. Now in his late seventies, he was having a ball.

  Dad finally asked Margaret to marry him and she said yes – only, he wanted to move in with her! She explained that it would be better if he got his own flat there until she could sort something out with her son. But he didn’t make any move other than to invite Margaret to his flat for a weekend and they decided to go to his local club. She suffered from painful arthritis and he wasn’t best pleased when she couldn’t get up to dance so he simply asked someone else and left her sitting there among strangers!

  That Sunday, they decided to visit the market. Afterwards, he complained to us that, ‘It took her ages to walk up the bank!’

  He told of a dance session at Margaret’s local community centre, where she shared her concerns with him of being a bit overweight. This may have been a ploy to encourage him to enthuse that, no, she was just right. Instead, he pointed to one of her friends who was sitting opposite and said, ‘You’re not fat! Look at her, she’s fat.’ Whereupon the poor woman left in floods of tears.

  He brushed Margaret’s concerns aside and the next day, during a walk through the park, went behind a bush to relieve himself. Now, this woman was a retired music teacher, a refined person. When she expressed her concern at this practice, he simply replied that he was ex-army and that was what you did!

  By then Dad was suffering from prostate problems and was taking ages to pass water. He consulted the doctor, who advised him to have an operation and so, armed with his overnight bag of pyjamas and toiletries, he arrived at the hospital for his appointment. As he waited for a bed, he began reading the leaflet which explained the details of the operation and the side effects, which included possible difficulties with the sex lives of some patients. He walked out without explaining that he had changed his mind, hence I received another phone call at work from concerned staff. It was left to me to inform them that he had changed his mind.

  Margaret contacted him via letter: she explained that although he had asked her to marry him, and she had agreed, as he hadn’t made any attempt to move this forward, she was ending the relationship. Anyway, it would affect her pension from her husband and also finish her supply of free coal. So that was that. And please not to call at her house, the suit and shoes he had left behind would be posted on to him.

  After Margaret finished the relationship, Dad changed his mind about the prostate operation and assumed if he rang the hospital and told them that he was in agony and unable to pass urine, they would perform the surgery without him having to go on the waiting list again. He was admitted to the Freeman Hospital and I took in a selection of clothing hurriedly chosen from his flat. My brother David agreed to accompany me at visiting time and we walked into the ward, where Dad sat bolt upright in the bed, the picture of health. David noticed that he was wearing a T-shirt which he had screen-printed at college for a project. He turned to me and said, ‘I can’t believe you brought him a T-shirt that reads “Longshots” in a ward where none of them can have a piss!’

  The conversation around the bed revolved around Dad in pathos mood. How he should have married Margaret, and he missed the dancing, swimming, walking, etc., and how he could have been living in a lovely house with a garden with a swimming pool. We reminded him that he had made some pretty offensive remarks about her friends and this was not acceptable and also of the time when Margaret had asked him if she looked overweight at her local church hall. His head leaned to one side, eyebrows raised (not unlike his favourite TV character, Steptoe): ‘I know, I shouldn’t have said those things, she must have got sick of me.’

  Just then a nurse appeared:

  ‘Have you had your urine sample taken yet, Mr Luscombe?’

  ‘Yes, that fat nurse took it.’

  Aaargh, give me strength!

  Predictably, the test showed that Dad had indeed passed urine that day and he was discharged without further ado, much to his annoyance.

  * * *

  One evening at home, as I looked through the Evening Chronicle, I suddenly spotted him: ‘Is that Dad on the front page?’

  It surely was. A request had been made from Whitley Bay Lighthouse for volunteers to paint the lighthouse. Dad rode his pushbike from Newcastle’s West End, his old work overalls and a paintbrush rolled up on the back of his bike. He was seventy-eight.

  On cue he had panic attacks and our continuous round of visits to the hospital resumed, going through the rigmarole of his complaints about the drip attachment they put in his hand in case he needed an operation, after the ECG scans and everything else. I took him back home, bought his shopping – a Kentucky fried chicken meal – and asked him to stay at home for one day to recover. But he never did as he was asked and sprinted out as soon as I left.

  I received phone calls at work asking if I could go to Dad’s home because he had suffered an attack. My yearly leave allowance was rapidly reduced. The man upstairs to him was annoying him by walking downstairs too loudly. Another time this man had tried to repair a leaking pipe in his bathroom, which had burst and flooded the spare room, previously my brother’s room. Again, I took a day’s leave to sort it out. Now he was intent on moving house. This became his next topic of conversation, which he talked about obsessively and nothing else. Every time I sympathised, listened and tried to change the subject he simply ignored anything I had to say and went back to his own concerns. I missed calling on him for a few days because of a really bad cold and when I called, he said, ‘But I needed some marmalade!’

  He was given an application form for warden-controlled accommodation after a couple of weeks, Anchor housing on Elswick Road. I went to see it – a lovely flat with a communal social room where they served meals during the week, held classes and arranged trips to Harrogate and York. The warden was a decent bloke, what could be better? Dad went for a visit and then began packing, black bags lined his hallway. The next time I went to see him everything was back in its place: he had changed his mind. His mind was made up and changed back twice before he finally moved in. But all wa
s not well: he hated living there.

  When a wasp got into one of his slippers and stung his toe, the flat got the blame for that. He washed the windows with neat Domestos and began turning his slippers upside down. He didn’t like the lift, he didn’t like the bus service, the disabled son of the couple next door or the Scottish man who lived in the building. Another application form for accommodation was sent for.

  * * *

  Here, David recounts ‘The Lock on the Door’ story:

  ‘I came back from Europe after a month. When I turned up at the house, the lock which I had always said would break, had: the door was locked solid. [It was a prototype for the plastic deadlock doors that everyone has now.] When I advised Dad to patent it, he said, “What would be the point of that? It wouldn’t be a secret then, would it?”

  ‘Anyway, I was locked out, so I proceeded to the local social club where he was holed up to inform him of this, then I went to my mate’s house to stay over – I did feel guilty. Instead of Dad removing the mechanism, he continued to use it, but created another “Secret”: he drilled a hole in the window frame and filled it with putty. He would take a screwdriver out with him at all times so that if he was rejected by the door again, he could always use the screwdriver to open the sash window.

  ‘During his time in his flat, predictably, he experienced attacks. The warden sent for the ambulance and again, we carried out the routine of waiting at the hospital for hours as he complained about the bed, nurses, other patients, etc. Our eldest son Gavin went to visit. Dad was asleep on the bed, but he opened his eyes and promptly greeted him with, “Hello Gavin, you’re looking fat.”

  ‘Dad was discharged, we took him home, collected his shopping, washing and left him in his flat with the customary fast-food meal he preferred. We mistakenly started to take him to the Denton for a couple of drinks once a week to cheer him up, but we soon became suicidal as he ranted and ranted, swearing and cursing about everything on where he was living. At first, we sympathised and tried to change the conversation, but during a three-hour-long evening out, his complaints were the only topic of conversation and this went on for months. David and I came home from work to find a note from Gavin, which read: The warden of Grandad’s flat has left a message, he wants you to write a letter of complaint about the Scottish T**t so that they can evict him.

  ‘Apparently, this Scottish gentleman had a reputation, complaints were numerous. We wrote the letter, but it didn’t make a difference because Dad had already made up his mind to move from there anyway and had begun to visit other properties. He began to reminisce. When he was younger, he would hold onto the bar at the back of the bus and jump off as it was still moving towards the stop [a sort of fairground worker stunt when they jump off and on the dodgem cars]. Unfortunately, he forgot that he wasn’t young and fit anymore and duly fell off, hurting his hip and was taken to hospital. After we brought him home, got his shopping and settled him down with a Balti chicken meal, we realised this could be a rest from us going to the pub for an ear-bashing. He was unable to go out for a few weeks, which meant us going to see him more often, but when he recovered, we no longer offered to go to the pub.’

  * * *

  By now, Bob and Mam had been married for three years and they were quite happy going on rallies with their Christian friends to venues such as the Isle of Mull. Whenever we visited, Bob made sure he had his Bible open – it always displayed dozens of yellow Stickits, giving the impression that he had lots of favourite parts in the Bible and what a devout Christian he was. Mam’s sister Ellen would not go to visit her when he was at home and as I’ve said, even declined the wedding invitation – ‘I don’t like him, Doreen must be mad to marry him! I’m not going to the wedding because I’d be a hypocrite.’

  We often talked about their wedding day at the Civic Centre. Afterwards we all went back to Mam’s bungalow – everyone had chipped in to make the food. There were lots of really nice people there, the sort that were Christian, but didn’t pontificate, unlike Bob. He made sure everyone knew that it was wrong to smoke and drink alcohol, but my brother’s girlfriend Alison caught him in the kitchen with a fag in his hand, swigging from a bottle of Baileys. She didn’t mention this to Mam. Bob later thanked her for not revealing his ‘little foibles’, but it wasn’t for his benefit, she didn’t want to upset Mam.

  I was standing in the sitting room, talking to some of the guests, when Bob said to me, ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  When I replied that I was OK as I was talking to my brother, who was also standing, he whispered in my ear, ‘Well, the chairs might not be too grand, but they are mine now.’

  Mam had experienced pains in her side and we regularly saw her holding the side of her waist, but she never complained, just got on with it. She spent two months in hospital for tests and we visited most nights, going straight from work. Around then we took Dad out for a drink to the pub and as usual, he began complaining about the bus services. When I answered that Mam was very ill and what he was complaining about was a minor thing in life, he replied, ‘Well, I don’t care! She divorced me, didn’t she?’

  When we went to pick him up, three days later, he was surprised to see us and observed rather smugly, ‘I thought you wouldn’t come back after what I said about your ma.’

  Bob always came to the hospital and brought his Bible with him. He was ecstatic in reporting a prayer meeting he had attended where the speaker read the Beatitudes. I felt like saying, ‘Yeah, those, we did them at school’ but restrained myself.

  One of Bob’s friends accompanied him on this visit and was quite shocked to learn that I often bought a lottery ticket – how sinful to gamble! Again, I wanted to say, ‘Yeah, like drinking Baileys and smoking is a sin, Bob.’ But I could see how very distressed he was so I held my tongue.

  He was really upset to witness Mam’s wedding ring fly from her hand across the floor as she raised her hand and took this to be a bad omen. I felt sorry for him, because he was genuinely scared.

  When the tests came back, she was told she had liver cancer and it was estimated that she had just two months to live. Because Mam had changed so much since marrying Bob, preferring to be at church most of the time, reading her Bible even when we visited and forgetting to send family birthday cards, she seemed to be distant from us and so I didn’t think that I would take this news as badly as I did. The next day, I went to work and tried to get on with things as normal. My boss Debra noticed that I was quiet and when I told her what was wrong, she sent me home immediately.

  I was travelling on the bus home when a friend sat beside me. She told me that she had been in Marks & Spencer. She was about to get onto the escalator to go down and a man was in front of her, cleaning his shoes on the brushes at the side of the metal steps. When she got to the bottom, she had noticed that it was my dad. She sniggered at this, but I had other things on my mind – besides, that was normal for him.

  Dad must have been thinking about Mam and asked us if he could visit her in hospital. My brother David was concerned that he would say something tactless, but when I told Mam she was pleased that she could make her peace with him (we made sure that Dad would be there when Bob wasn’t). Dad was very uncomfortable during the visit, but still mentioned that she shouldn’t have had pickle juice! Mam was amused at this, no doubt remembering his antics with the Beechams Powders when he was ill. Of course, drinking pickle juice causes cancer! Mam was discharged home after a month in hospital and a nurse made home visits. Bob was with her all of the time and would interrupt our visits with, ‘I think she’s getting tired now’ – much to the annoyance of Mam, who encouraged us to stay.

  Mam’s sister Ellen came to visit her in her home and brought her a large bunch of flowers. As I made a move to put them in water, Bob volunteered to do this. Three days later, when I visited, I commented how lovely Ellen’s flowers looked. Mam told me that they were a different bunch – there was no water in the vase so the others had died. Bob had spitefully put them in the
dry vase to wither.

  * * *

  For the final two weeks of her life Mam was being cared for at the Marie Curie Centre. It was at this time that Dad secured a warden-controlled flat in the Leazes area. As well as visiting Mam every night straight after work, I was also making new curtains for Dad’s flat, cleaning his rooms and helping to move him in.

  Bob continued to enjoy holding services in Mam’s room at the Marie Curie. Most times we left the room when this was about to take place, but on one occasion Ellen, my son Paul and myself were trapped in the corner on a sofa bed when they came in. One of them began to sing loudly with total disregard for others who were dying in the hospice. There was a pause.

  ‘Amen!’

  Ellen belched loudly, then said, ‘Oops, it must have been that corned beef and onion sandwich!’

  I was sat on the same sofa with Paul and despite the grave circumstances, I could feel the seat bouncing as we stifled our laughter.

  * * *

  A nurse brought soup and pudding in for Mam on a tray. Bob volunteered to feed her, but she declined, preferring to hold onto her independence. Slowly and shakily, she moved the spoon towards her mouth, then spilt a tiny drop on her nightdress.

  ‘There, you see!’ Bob reacted snappily. I sensed he wanted me to intervene, probably so that he could remonstrate with me and ask me to leave, but I just smiled encouragingly to Mam. By now, she was very weak: she held Paul’s hand and said how pleased she was to see him. My brother David and sister-in-law Alison, Mam’s brothers, John and Leslie, and her sister Ellen were there.

  The next time we visited, she was alone, lying on her back with a Bible placed under her hand – the page was at Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd’. The nurse told me that Dad had placed it there. I informed her that Bob was not my dad, only married to my mam.