News bulletins on the wireless seemed universally gloomy and one day George summed it all up by saying after hearing one of them as they all sat at table,
“Perhaps nations are not meant to get on well with each other.” No one could think of a reply to what he had said.
The local newspaper announced that the sodium lights installed on what they all called the top road were going to be switched on for the first time on an evening in October. George came home from the dockyard drawing office with red, white and blue caps he had bought on the way for them all to wear when they went up to watch. Edna and Louisa both needed persuasion to put them on but, when they looked out of the window to see the most respectable of their neighbours sporting similar versions of the national colours, they consented and all four walked up to Watling Street wearing patriotic colours in the half light of the late evening.
They stood with the others at the end of the lane under one of the tall lampposts, which Louisa had told them had been installed in September 1939 but never used till now. A glow in each light began as the darkened sky replaced the daylight and soon fizzed into a steady orange. All the people looked at each other with surprised expressions: the colours on their hats and scarves were not the same as when they left their homes: greens and browns replaced the colours they expected to see and the whites had taken on a neutral luminosity. Some brash souls began to sing:
“There’ll always be an England,
An England proud and free . . .”
but most of the people present remained silent and the song did not last more than one verse, largely because most of the people could not remember any more, even if they had wanted to.
After those who raised their voices had lowered them, an eerie hush to match the forlorn colours descended on the small crowd and the people began to disperse in family groups and parties of friends. Any wider association between people who did not know each other was resisted. The four Rylands walked down the lane without the sense of an affirmation of peace that they hoped that the switching on of the lights would have brought them. Under the ordinary, old fashioned lamps which were also on now in their lane, you could see that the caps that they had taken off and held in their hands were the right colour after all, but the confidence they had been meant to represent had evaporated.
“School in the morning. Up you go to bed,” Edna said to Alex after warming mugs of cocoa had been enjoyed. “Make sure you take your glasses off when you’ve finished reading!”
As he obeyed this fatuous injunction half an hour later, Alex brushed his hand against the scar on his chin and was relieved to find how small it had become.
Lying curled up in bed in a darkness not induced by blackout curtains, he started to review what had happened since the morning he had tried to rush out into the garden in Raynes Park all that time ago, but was relieved of most of the memory by losing the battle to stay awake.
Acknowledgements
Isabel Sullivan at the Surrey History Centre made a search on my behalf to discover important information about the London Blitz and about the nature of the housing in the area where my story begins. She drew attention to the fact that a 4/KG54 Junkers aircraft crashed on houses in Richmond Avenue on 20th September 1940 (The Blitz: Then and Now, ed. William Ramsey, Battle of Britain Prints International, 1988).
Susan Andrew at the Education, Leisure and Libraries Department in Merton Civic Centre provided me with information about the bomb damage in the Bushey Mead Estate, the relevant extract from the 1939 Electoral Register and a section of the minutes of the meeting of Merton and Morden UDC held on 14th February 1944 about possible repairs to bombed houses. She also made extracts available from Judith Goodman, Merton and Morden, A Pictorial History, Phillimore, 1995, and from E.M.Jowett, Raynes Park, A Social History, Merton Historical Society, 1987. A comparison of maps made in 1933 and 1952, as well as subsequent visual research, shows that 74 Chestnut Road was not rebuilt in its original form after the war.
Peggy Pyke-Lees knew where all that information was available and guided me to the sources. Philippa Kennard-Bent and Sheila Donaldson Walters read through my manuscript, making helpful comments and constructive suggestions. Mark and Magda Norris gave me information towards the cameo appearance of the Polish airman in Chapter 7.
Vanessa, my late and dear companion of nearly thirty-seven years, was most supportive of this endeavour and supplied the deliberately ambiguous title for the story. James Aitken Ballard believed in it and put it in the right place at the right time. Sally Lawrence, Henrietta Hopkins, Guy Hopkins and Sarah Ballard also gave me great support.
Angus Calder, The People’s War, Jonathan Cape, 1969, provided an essential stabilizer to the process of remembering the involvement of men, women and children who had neither political nor military responsibility during the struggle against the axis powers.
To these and many others besides, I offer my sincere thanks.
REB
A Childs War Page 26
