by Len Goodman
At first I could tell that Mum was really upset; as much as anything it was the shame of it all. In the mid-fifties working-class people just didn't do that sort of thing. There was no one at my school, that I knew of, whose parents were divorced. While we might have been doing well financially our family was still very much working class. As an antidote to the humiliation Mum turned into a workaholic, which is saying something because she was always hard working: everyone in the Eldridge family was. She'd be in the shop from the crack of dawn until ten o'clock at night; it became her release. Even though she got two or three part-time assistants to help her in the shop she took on the responsibility of it all single-handed. She was definitely a chip off my Granddad's block. Looking back I can now see that my mum had no friends, she had no social life and we never ever went abroad on holiday. Ours were usually three- or four-day affairs when we went to Devon at Whitsun or somewhere similar. Mum's whole life was that shop.
When Dad went he left me a little letter saying, 'Please don't think my love for you has changed or anything. It's just that your mum and me can't live together.' Dad eventually met another lady, her name was Rene, and they set up home together in a maisonette in Dartford, just a few miles east of Blackfen. Not too long afterwards I bumped into him in Welling, outside a shop selling furniture. He was buying some things for their new home. Dad gave me a hug and shortly after that he telephoned Mum and they talked for the first time since he left. After that they talked regularly on the phone, especially when I'd been naughty. She'd put me on the phone and get him to tell me off, but it wasn't only Dad dishing out bad stuff. Although initially I didn't see him very much things gradually eased and I started to see him more often – we got on great together and the fact that Mum and him talked made things easier all round.
Just before my eleventh birthday Mum suggested I should do something different.
'Len, the Boys' Brigade is starting up in the church hall up the road. You should go because you'd meet other boys from round here.'
'What's the Boys' Brigade?'
'Well, they do all sorts of things, Len. You'll get a uniform and it'll be fun.'
At six o'clock the following Tuesday I went along for the first night at the new company. I walked in and there was this man; he seemed like an ex-sergeant major. I remember looking up and thinking, 'You look like a giant.' I had arrived at about ten to six, but by a quarter past six no one else had come along – it was just the giant and me.
First of all he explained to me what the Boys' Brigade was all about.
'It's for the advancement of Christ's kingdom among boys and the promotion of habits of obedience, reverence, discipline, self-respect and all that tends towards a true Christian manliness. Have you got that, son?'
'Err, yes...I think so.'
'Well, it looks like no one else is coming, so we'd better make a start. Let's do some marching.'
Next thing I know I'm marching up and down, with him giving orders and pointers as to how to do it better. This must be the discipline part I thought.
'No, no, lad, swing those arms more.' I marched up and down for about ten minutes before he asked me what seemed like a daft question.
'Would you like to play the drum or the bugle?'
'I think I'd like to play the drum.'
'Well, we haven't got any at the moment so you'll just have to pretend and make the noise of a drum while you're marching.'
Next thing I'm marching and mouthing ter-rum, ter-rum and feeling really bloody silly.
'Louder boy! Sound like you mean it.'
The next week two other boys turned up and I think one opted for the trumpet. Like me he just made the noises as we still didn't have the real thing. Not that it would have been any good if we had instruments as none of us had a clue how to play them. Over the next weeks the numbers gradually grew and after about eight weeks the uniforms showed up. I got mine and never went back! Before the Boys' Brigade I'd tried the Cubs but after I got the uniform I never bothered going again. It was the same thing with the Sea Cadets – they came after the Boys' Brigade – although I think it was more the knots that did for me with them. I never could get to grips with knottery.
But school holidays weren't all about being a barrow boy. In the late summer of 1955, when I was 11, and still on school holidays I asked Mum if I could go swimming at the outdoor pool at Danson Park, which was about a mile from our place. I'd been naughty, I guess, so Mum said, 'No! You're not going.' There was no question of my going without telling her because I needed the money to get in. I was so desperate to go that I resorted to stealing, although it was only kind of stealing. Today it's forged £50 notes that everyone's on the look-out for; back then it was forged half-crown coins. The shop was always getting them and, because it was no good trying to take them to the bank, Mum used to chuck them all in an old biscuit tin that she kept at home. I went to the tin and stole a half crown, and soon after I found out that God really does move in mysterious ways.
Having gained admission with my forged half crown, and been given change as well, I changed and went in swimming. I'd been mucking about in the pool for a little while when I got out of the water. As I was running along the side of the pool I slid on the top of an ice-cream tub and over I went, crashing into this little low wall that surrounded the bathing area. I bashed my upper shin on the wall and it really hurt, so much so that I was hopping about yelling in pain. Then, for some unknown reason, I jumped into the pool, maybe hoping the water would ease the pain. Blood was gushing out of the wound and the water around me began turning red. I hobbled out of the pool and by this time it was hurting so much that I was crying. It was literally a bleedin' great gash that clearly needed attention and so I went to the first-aid man, who doubled as the pool attendant. I sat in his little hut and he cleaned it up the best he could.
'You'll need to go to hospital. It'll definitely need stitches. Sit there and don't move,' he ordered.
He then got on the tannoy, the one they used to tell us to 'stop diving in the shallow end', and said, 'If anybody is leaving the pool and if they're going near to the hospital there's a little boy in need of some stitches. Could they please come to the attendants' hut and see me.'
Almost immediately a man arrived and said, 'I go right by the hospital. I'll take him.'
So off we go, me in this strange man's car, to the War Memorial Hospital in Welling. Can you imagine that happening today? He'd have to have police checks, sign forms and such by which time I would probably have bled to death. Once at the hospital I hobbled in. Obviously there couldn't have been as many people getting ill in those days because there wasn't a queue.
'I'll just wait for you to get stitched up and then I'll run you home,' said the man with the car.
Stitching me up really hurt but once it was done the man carried me into his car and drove me down Shooters Hill to where I lived. 'Do you think you'll be able to walk from the car?' he asked.
'I don't know, mister, I don't think I can.'
So he carried me up the garden path and knocked on our front door.
When Mum opened the door he said, 'I'm sorry, your son has had an accident.'
'Oh?' said Mum. 'You'd better come in.'
He sat down and Mum made him a cup of tea. Eight months later she married him and he became my stepdad.
Chapter Two
Up in the Morning and
Off to School
The man who took me home was called Alex Dewdney and pretty soon he was popping round for more cups of tea; before long it was more than just cups of tea. After they got married things in our house changed a bit. To begin with, I think my nose was a bit put out. I never doubted that I was still the apple of my mum's eye, but I was well aware that I was now sharing her affections. At that age you don't really think about your parents having sex or anything like that, but if it did cross your mind you didn't like it very much, at least I didn't. It wasn't that I disliked my new stepdad; it was just that kid thing of pushing the boun
daries and trying to get what you wanted by fair means or foul. To be fair, he had a tough time with me. It was all really awkward and if he did give me a wallop, which I probably deserved, I'd quickly say, 'You're not my dad, you can't hit me.' It sometimes led to a bit of friction between Mum and my stepdad. I was from a broken home, in the sense that my parents had split up, but my home wasn't broken in my eyes: it was fine with just Mum and me. I was too young to see it from her perspective; her home was incomplete without a man to share it with, but both my stepdad and I resented each other.
Alex also had a daughter whose name was Adrienne and she was six or seven years older than me – she was a jolly hockey sticks kind of girl. Alex worked for the Pru – the Prudential Assurance Company – he was the 'Man from the Pru'. He used to go round door to door selling penny policies. It seems strange now that this was the way people had insurance: about a third of the population had these little life insurance and endowment policies which they would contribute a few pennies a week towards; the Prudential had an army of these salesmen who collected the money. It was a bit like the Christmas clubs that used to be run at pubs where people would contribute a few pence a week towards the money they spent on presents, food and drink; 36 pounds 18 shillings and 11 pence went a long way in those days. Most people, my mum included, would have nothing to do with HP – hire purchase – and credit cards were something we knew nothing about and it would be years before I had one.
It wasn't just HP that Mum would have nothing to do with. She didn't believe in banks either, nor would she have a mortgage. The greengrocer's shop was all cash in those days. Mum and Alex decided we should move from Blackfen and had a mind to move to Welling, which was a step up in the world. She knew a couple who owned a nice detached house in Marina Drive who were emigrating to Australia. She asked them if they were selling their house. They were, which was great news as it was not just a nice house but it had a good-size garden, too; it was also one of only three detached houses in the road.
'I'll buy it,' said my mum and she did just that – for cash. That's how much money the greengrocer's was making. While the new house was nice it had no central heating, and it was just open fires downstairs. Getting ready for bed in the winter was a speedy activity. In the coldest weather I used to get dressed and undressed in bed, I would have all my school clothes by the side of the bed. My rule was that when Mum woke me up to go to school and you could see your breath then I got dressed under the covers.
While the shop was doing well it wasn't just money from the business that bought the new house. In 1957 my nan died; she was only a little over 60. Granddad had died a year or so before and he was only a few years older than that when he died. All the Eldridge kids were left around £3,000 each, a tidy sum back then.
While my mum put her share to good use, my Aunt Ada decided to do just the opposite, or so it seemed at the time. Aunt Ada was the black sheep of the family and she decided that she wasn't going to buy a house; she was going to go on the Queen Mary to New York. First of all, though, she needed to look the part and she decked herself out with £500-worth of new clothes, a huge amount to spend.
To put the whole thing into perspective this was a time when more people took the boat across the Atlantic than flew between America and Britain. Taking the boat was a lot more genteel and Aunt Ada had decided this was the way to meet the man of her dreams. She was off to find herself a husband and, having decked herself out like a dog's dinner, she booked her passage to New York on the Queen Mary, first class. On the same crossing as Aunt Ada was a gentleman by the name of Albert Wallbanks, every inch the perfect English gentleman, except for one thing. He was a gentleman's butler, rather than a gentleman. He was butler to Lord Veitch who each winter would holiday in Florida with his wife after having taken the Queen Mary to New York and then driven south in the motorcar he kept in America. Albert Wallbanks would be left to close up his lordship's house, which overlooked Regent's Park, before he followed on the next crossing of the liner.
Albert was not someone who wanted to be a gentleman's butler all his life: in truth he was rather partial to the idea of becoming a gentleman in his own right. So there he was, living the high life on board the Queen Mary, passage all paid for, on the lookout for a rich widow, when who should he meet on the first day out of Southampton but my Aunt Ada. I would love to have been a fly on the wall listening to the two of them talking with one another about their circumstances. Apparently Aunt Ada had no trouble believing anything Albert said because he was very la-di-da; he even dressed in a white tie for dinner. I can just imagine the two of them giving it large and spinning fantastic tales to one another.
By the time they got to New York they decided they had fallen in love. Albert telegraphed his lordship to say he would not be joining him in Florida and was leaving his employ. The lovebirds then had three or four days in Manhattan before heading back home on the return sailing of the Queen Mary. There was just one slight problem: having resigned his position Albert didn't have a return ticket. This was quickly solved when Aunt Ada paid for his passage and the two of them headed homewards to Southampton. As they were approaching home the reality of both their situations must have begun to kick in, but not before they decided to get married. And they weren't going to marry just anywhere: they were going to get married at Caxton Hall in London. This was the place to get married. All the society weddings took place there in the fifties and sixties; Ada and Albert were just doing the right thing.
My mum got in a right old tizzy about the wedding. Seeing that it was at Caxton Hall meant we all had to dress up to the nines. She took me to a shop in Bermondsey called Custer's; it was a kids' clothing shop and was the place to get kids' suits. Custer's was in Tower Bridge Road and Mum took me to be measured. When they had finished doing that she started looking around the shop where she spotted some nylon shirts.
'Oooo, look Lenny, these are nice.' She turned to the shop manager who had been serving us and said, 'We'll have one of those, thank you.'
The man looked ever so slightly shocked. 'But, Madam, they're four pounds 19 and 11.' Today that would be close to 80 quid and it was clear that the man was implying that Mum couldn't afford it. Mum, without batting an eyelid, said, 'Very reasonable, eh, Lenny? We'll have four.' The following bonfire night I was wearing one of them and waving a sparkler around when I managed to burn a hole in the collar. Mum gave me such a row.
As far as our family was concerned Aunt Ada's marriage to Albert was the wedding of the decade. Before we left home I got a good talking to about behaving myself. I looked like Little Lord bloody Fauntleroy's cousin, although I wasn't alone: everyone else was booted and suited – the East End goes up West!
Their only problem was the money that Ada had got from her inheritance had all but gone. The newlyweds ended up staying in England for just a short period before deciding to go and see my Aunt Gladys and Harry who were living in Vancouver. Albert returned to his former trade and became a butler to one of the richest men in Canada who had made his money in lumber, while Aunt Ada did the cooking and kept house. They must have been pretty good at what they did as they were with him for the rest of their working lives. He, too, must really have appreciated them because when they retired he gave them a fantastic golden handshake, after which they moved back to England. When Albert died, Aunt Ada lived with my mum at Marina Drive for a while. She then got a nice flat in Sidcup and lived there until she couldn't cope on her own. After that she went to an old people's home in Bournemouth, near to where my cousin Martin, my Uncle George's son, lived.
What I love about that story is that it could have all gone pear-shaped so easily after they found out that each of them had been living out a kind of fantasy while on the Queen Mary. Instead they really did live happily ever after.
I was far from the best student there's ever been, but what I did love at school was any kind of sport, especially cricket and football, but even that got me into trouble. When I was 11 I moved up to Westwood Secondary
Modern; I used to walk to school from our house near Falconwood Parade. It was not very far but it meant crossing the A2, the Rochester Way; you'd have trouble doing that now, as it's one of the busiest roads in Britain, but in the fifties it was a two-lane road. Shortly after I went to Westwood I was picked to play for the under-13s cricket team. The big match of the season was always the one against Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, a team Westwood had not beaten in living memory. They had a boy in their team who was something of a freak of nature. His name was Grover and although he was only 12 he looked about 17. He was head and shoulders above the rest of us, built more like a man than a boy, and was also pretty useful with both bat and ball. We all looked our age and, more to the point, played cricket like we were 12.
Word had gone around that it was almost impossible to bowl him out and he bowled like shit off a shovel; he nearly always took five wickets or more in every game. We would never beat Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School with him on the team. In the Westwood team with me was my best pal from school, Peter Dawson – Pete opened the bowling against Chislehurst and Sidcup after they had won the toss and elected to bat. Naturally, more man than boy, Grover was one of their opening batsmen. He and another kid strolled out of the pavilion looking confident and assured; Pete Dawson looked nervous. Pete's first three balls were fended off or let go by Grover who was obviously just getting his eye in. When Pete sent down his fourth ball Grover connected beautifully with it, a certain boundary, and it came flying towards midwicket where I was fielding. I barely had time to see it and just kind of stuck out my right hand, whereupon the ball hit it with such a force that it really stung. Unbelievably I didn't drop the ball: it just seemed to stick to my hand like it was covered in glue. It took a second or so for it to sink in because most of our fielders were looking towards the boundary expecting to see the ball crossing it for four. Suddenly I realised I'd caught him and so did everyone else, although I'm not sure who was the most surprised. Pete looked at me, I looked at Pete, and unlike today where we would have started whooping, hollering and jumping around I just clenched my fist and did a kind of half salute in Pete's direction to show how pleased I was that I'd caught him; Pete did pretty much the same back. With Grover out, there was a collapse in the batting and for the first time since the old king was a boy we'd beaten the Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School.
