In My Wildest Dreams

by Leslie Thomas

  At the centre of Maesglas in the nineteen-forties was a large grubby farmhouse which had once been the only building for miles. It was used as a junior school – the Farm School, as it was known – and it was there that I continued what never turned out to be an extensive education.

  The previous school, where my brother had become impaled on the gate, left little memory, except of a headmistress who had haircut like a cooking pot and wore a pin-striped suit. I remember her as being of particularly nasty disposition, smacking the red, bare knees of her charges with alarming force and frequency. Very recently a man called Terry Underwood, who composed a splendid volume of old photographs called Yesterday's Newport, and still lives in the town, told me that he had attended the same infants' school and suffered the same indignities. We are the same age so we must have been classmates. 'Remember Miss So-and-So?' he reminisced. 'The way she used to go for your knees?'

  This fierce lady took a particular interest in me. She would stop me at random in the school playground and painfully peer in my ears. Apparently she did not think that I washed or blew my nose enough. On the very last day at the school, when I was eight, she had me circling the asphalt yard while continuously blowing my nose. As I came around for each new circuit, with this ogre standing like a ringmaster urging me to trot and blow faster, I could see the removals van standing in front of my house. On my last moment in the school I dropped my snotty handkerchief through her letter box and ran.

  At Maesglas, the Farm School was a cronky old building that leaned perilously to one side. As the robust children rushed and bustled inside, it creaked and swayed and there appeared to be a race between the building of a new junior school and this one tumbling on our heads. Across a playing field was a newly built senior establishment, to which I transferred, where the patriotic headmaster, urged on by wartime Government posters, decided to enlist every pupil in a gardening campaign. Each one was to invest a shilling in a limited company and the profits from the produce we grew would be distributed accordingly. This was not welcome news to me for I was weary enough after my own efforts at digging-for-victory at home, not to mention the fatiguing hours spent working on the air raid shelter. Now I had to take up the spade at school as well. For a skinny boy I had biceps like a navvy. Sometimes my brother would bring his friends to the house to see them. Nobody would fight a boy with muscles like that and I became the lightweight champion of Maesglas without ever having a contest. At least the school, with its shilling-a-head capital, provided proper gardening implements. At home my own tool was a garden fork with one of the outside prongs broken. Any shovelling, including the filling of the sacks so freely provided by my father, had to be accomplished with the hand coal shovel from our fireside. Once my mother heard me shouting and rushed to the back of the house to see the garden fork apparently impaling my foot. Actually it was the broken prong merely resting on the toecap of my shoe. Thinking I was pinned to the ground, she screamed and pulled the fork out, staring in relief and then fury when she realised that she had been tricked. Her hand came around my ear again and again and I ran out into the street shouting: 'Can't you take a joke?'

  Whatever his plans for helping the war effort, the headmaster of the Maesglas school was ill-prepared when the Germans eventually attacked. There were no air raid shelters provided and his instructions were to send the children home at the first howl of the air raid siren; not, in retrospect, very clever advice. One day a German plane was crossing at only five hundred feet while we were galloping home below. The local anti-aircraft guns were firing and missing jubilantly. Their deadly shrapnel, however, was showering all around us as we ran unprotected down the middle of the street. I was running with my brother, slapping our hips, pretending to be cavalry. The firing was directly overhead and jagged metal clattered all around. All the boys were enthusiastic collectors of war souvenirs and when a huge lump of shrapnel bounced in the gutter almost at our feet Roy and I both made a grab for it, pushing at each other for the prize, the battle above of no importance. I picked it up. It was red hot. A woman howled from a neighbouring doorway for us to take cover in her house and, realising at last that we were in dire danger, we ran for shelter. When the firing was done, there was a mad rush from safety by all the children seeking to claim the shining shrapnel. The big lump was still hot but my brother and I both made for it. We reached it simultaneously and there was another battle, in the middle of the road this time, over who should have it.

  Like many brothers Roy and I were rarely on close terms, although I was often protective towards him if he were threatened by other older boys. He had a gift for being injured. He broke his arm (again) tumbling from our fence. In a street fight in which missiles were thrown, he was hit by an edge-on roof slate. It split him spectacularly above the mouth and he had to go to hospital for stitching. When the wound was almost healed, he was trying to climb on the local dustcart, to retrieve some treasure, when the vehicle stopped suddenly and he collided with it. His face looked like the end of an exploding cigar. Some years ago I had a letter from the one-time urchin who had thrown the slate, a most erudite note, quoting the classics and full of wisdom and humour. I could never imagine him writing like that. He also apologised for damaging my brother.

  Because of the everyday dramas of the real war, the children of my generation went in for a military type of violence. Maesglas was often like a citadel – Moscow indeed – roamed and patrolled by armies of boys bearing arms. Bows and arrows, spears, catapults and cudgels were used in imitation wars with armies from other districts. Each street also had its own gang which might be at war with the next street or those living a few rows of chimneys away. Within the street were even smaller echelons waging brisk civil wars until called upon by the street or the district itself to form part of a larger force.

  These battles, or charges as we called them, were frequently injurious. One boy plummeted on his head from a railway water tower while dropping housebricks on the heads of a horde from the Gaer invading across the railway line.

  This aerial bombardment was itself an extension of the pastime of dropping bricks aimed from a bridge into the funnels of passing steam trains. If you scored a direct hit down the funnel the brick came back like a cannonball. The Gaer army made an armoured car from a perambulator festooned with dustbin lids. I personally countered this weapon by inventing a giant catapult of a cycle inner tube fixed to the back framework of an upright wooden chair. Anchored strongly, it could project a half brick at great velocity, and the brilliant innovation of a horizontal cycle wheel as a base gave it a circular field of fire. Our first shot drilled a jagged hole through the perambulator armoured car and almost through the lad crouched within. Our giant catapult also sank a raft being paddled across the pond at the Woods during another raid by the Gaer gang. It was so successful, in fact, that I had definite thoughts of using it against the Germans if they ever mounted their threatened invasion. Our Moscow would have been defended with all the devotion and ardour of the real one.

  Unless called upon for the larger wars, I belonged to the smallest gang in the street. There were only two of us, Chubber and I, but we were lithe and mobile, we told ourselves, able to strike and vanish in a way that the larger echelons found impossible. We also had a knife, an air rifle and a real revolver.

  Chubber Helmich was my only real friend. He was an india-rubber boy who could duck, feint and fold up like a concertina, so that hitting him was next to impossible. His father, a Belgian, adored his little son. If we were playing in his house his parent would gaze at him and at regular intervals murmur: 'Howya, boy?' and Chubber would blush but dutifully reply: 'Howya, Dad?' I found this very odd and I told my mother but she was thoughtful about it and eventually said that it happened because the man loved his boy so deeply.

  Chubber's father bought him a wonderful box of tools, a real carpenter's chest, and I was consumed with envy. I had begun collecting bits and pieces for carpentry (I don't know where the urge or the skill, if any, vanished,
for today I am incapable of putting a picture on a wall without the area looking as if it's had the attention of a firing squad). Chubber's tools were magnificent – planes and saws and many sizes of chisels and screwdrivers; measuring implements of precision and beauty – all housed in a handsome wooden box. My mother vowed to help me to get a similar kit together and bought me a saw for my birthday. It was, however, a strange, narrow saw; it could only be used for cutting keyholes so its use was limited. Even when I cut some new keyholes in our own doors it did not work out successfully. In fact they became extremely large and my mother hid them from the rent collector in case he reported us to the council.

  I did, however, have the revolver. This was an unequalled possession. A genuine Colt service revolver 'as used in the battle of Madagascar', according to my elder brother Lin, who came home after taking part in that skirmish against the Vichy French. I had made a wooden gun and Lin's baby son, Graham, had cried so much to have it that Lin offered to make an exchange – the real weapon for my wooden fake.

  'Say he goes and shoots somebody?' my mother said anxiously after my undelayed acceptance. And an unusual understatement: 'He could get into trouble.'

  There was no ammunition with the weapon and my brother had removed one or two essential parts. Nevertheless, it was a real gun. I would stride through the streets of Moscow with the huge revolver stuck in my snake belt and Chubber ranging alongside with his scout knife and Diana air rifle. A formidable pair.

  We had a secret sign, leaving messages in niches known only to us, signed off with a drawing of a dagger dripping blood. One day Chubber was taken to hospital where he nearly died of peritonitis. My mother was also ill and I cried in bed at night. After several weeks Chubber had recovered enough to send me a letter – signed with a shaky, dripping dagger. I knew then he would be all right. Forty years later, opening a letter I saw again the sign of the blooded dagger. I had forgotten it.

  There were sporadic outbreaks of fighting at the Sunday school where Roy and I were sent by our mother while she went to bed with a cup of tea and the People. We each had a penny for the collection plate which we spent on sweets. When sweets vanished in the war they were curiously replaced by carrots and we spent our collection money on them instead. I still have perfect teeth.

  There were agitators at Sunday school who caused trouble, and one afternoon I was leaving the corrugated iron church clutching my Bible text card when I was set upon by a jealous rival. I fought with my bony fists and elbows and we ended up in a pool of mud. An angular Sunday school teacher rescued me and my text and insisted on accompanying me home. I could not understand why she did this. My assailant had vanished, vanquished, and my clothes were only wet and muddy. I could have done all the necessary explaining myself. She probably had an urge to take the gospel into someone's home and she chose mine. I was annoyed when she insisted on coming with me and I strode off on the wet Sunday pavements, with the zealous lady lagging behind. Indoors my mother was fluttering the pages of the People With gentle snores. I waited, half-hiding, hoping the Sunday school lady had changed her mind.

  She had not. She puffed to the front door and knocked evangelically. My befuddled mother was brought down to face a prolonged monologue. It was not all religious for the visitor's ploy was to obtain conversion by conversation, by discussing the children, perhaps, or the victim's hobbies.

  My mother's hobby, apart from going to bed with the People on Sunday afternoons, was knitting and eventually, to get rid of the garrulous woman, my mother promised to knit some clothes for the Sunday school nativity play.

  We had ample wool because my father when returning from a voyage would bring home sweaters, scarves, gloves, balaclava helmets and suchlike, knitted by patriotic ladies and sent to the armed forces and the Merchant Navy. The garments were in service colours; air force blue, navy blue and khaki. Roy and I would go to school on sharp mornings wrapped up like whalers. We could wear a different colour balaclava each day. The sweaters were huge but Mum swiftly unravelled the wool and made something else. She even knitted us woollen drawers to wear under our short trousers, but these itched and, since it was the debagging season, the risk of being found with our loins encased in RAF blue was too great. We stopped wearing them.

  As promised, my mother set about making the costumes for the nativity play; a cloak for the Virgin Mary, a coat for Joseph and some swaddling clothes for the baby in the manger. It was undoubtedly one of the few occasions when the infant Jesus has been seen wearing khaki.

  War at once brought to Maesglas a great deal more excitement and novelty than to most places in Britain. Elsewhere in the country, very little actually happened in the early days and there was relief as well as disappointment. But for us it was different. What appeared to be most of the British army tramped and trundled down our street on its way to France to face the foe.

  Tredegar Park, a mile away, had overnight become an enthralling place of camouflaged tents, drilling soldiers, horses and vehicles which swerved in clouds of summer dust. Sentries with long bayonets and uncertain expressions were posted at the familiar iron gates. What had been our commonplace playground was transformed into a fortress. The swings and the see-saw were cordoned off. Nothing so thrilling had happened in the park since Kenny Griffiths, a thin boy from Maesglas Avenue, got his head scrunched under the moving roundabout and had to be rushed to the Royal Gwent Hospital to have it straightened. Now all the local children went to the railings, their faces pressed between the bars in zoo-like attitudes, witnessing the might of the British Expeditionary Force assemble and flex its muscles.

  There was much lining up, and orders echoed over the tents. We saw a private soldier arrested for letting a couple of girls go into the park and having a lark with them on the playground swings. A fearsome sergeant-major in a flat hat arrived and bawled at the man who was led, head hanging, away. My brother said he had heard he was later shot.

  Every day and on many nights the soldiers marched and their vehicles rumbled down Maesglas Avenue on their way to Newport Docks and the troopships. Thousands of men clumped past our house, some blatantly singing, some with bands, some with heads set straight ahead. When the first rank of the day was spotted at the end of the street, we and our neighbours would leave our houses. People used to throw cigarettes and fruit and sweets to the soldiers who caught them on the march, or sometimes in the face. One young private was injured by an apple which hit him in the eye. He had to sit on the pavement outside our front garden for quite a time before continuing on his journey to the war. Sometimes my mother would stand at our gate and sing with the passing soldiers. Although the doomed prophecy of 'We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line' was popular, they also sang songs from the campaigns of another generation. My mother liked 'Goodbye Dolly I must leave you' because her name was Dolly. Army lorries and platoon trucks and ominous ambulances rolled up the little street, and, most thrillingly, small tanks, Bren-gun carriers and armoured cars. In the middle of the night I would wake and rush to the window when I heard them coming. They passed in the darkness like metal ghosts. There were also horses pulling field guns. After thousands of years the horse was at last being excused man's battles and there were now only a few which my mother said was as it should be. My father, perhaps recalling his profitable deal with the French farmer, one war ago, was of the opinion that they would never be satisfactorily replaced. 'In an emergency,' he said, 'you could always eat your horse. You can't eat a tank.'

  We had a family interest in the army's embarkation, for my Uncle Bert was a regular soldier and was in camp in the park, waiting to go to France. He was the husband of the only sister to whom my mother ever spoke, Auntie Iris who lived in Maesglas Crescent. She was younger and they had kept in contact when mother had abandoned, or been abandoned by, the rest of her family. (In writing this, I have just recalled that when I went into Barnardo's I 'gave' my aunt to another inmate, a boy called Stephenson who had no relations. He was very pleased to get letters f
rom her, although she must have been somewhat puzzled because she had intended to write to me. My attitude also seemed rather lofty in the circumstances.)

  Although Sergeant Bert Lucas had been in the Royal Engineers since the First World War, his wife was wracked with anxiety. I had orders to watch out for him passing by and, if possible, get a message to Iris, two streets away, so she could run and kiss him on the march. The tender moment, however, was not to be. He suddenly appeared, mixed in with hundreds of others, and was abreast of our house before we realised. My mother got to the gate and Bert broke ranks and scampered over to give her a kiss. I ran like mad, beating my imaginary horse along the pavements, alongside the troops, but by the time I reached Iris's house it was too late. The formation had tramped on.

  Uncle Bert served through the early months in France but was then injured when he fell from his bicycle after a shell had landed in the vicinity. He was sent home and invalided out of the service. He went to work in the port where he fell into the empty dry dock and was killed.

  Between the moving regiments, on a Sunday, came a kilted pipe band, with drums and busby hats, and a leader who tossed a silver mace. They were nothing to do with the military but were regular visitors. 'It's the Scotchilanders!' the children would shout and rush out into the road to watch them and perhaps put a penny in the proferred hat. Then, amazingly, we read in the South Wales Argus that they had been arrested as suspected IRA men. My mother said she had guessed all the time. 'Did you notice,' she said, her eyes narrowing, 'how that one in the front, the one with the stick, used to look down the side of our house every time they passed? Spying out the engine sheds, see. Planning to blow them up I expect.'