Auntie Joan and I shared a large bedroom, and Johnny had a closet-sized room down the corridor. Our room did have a small electric heater, and we used stone hot water bottles in the big bed at night. But the sheets were so moist that steam almost rose from them when touched by a warm body, and they smelled horribly of mildew.
The farm had a lot of acreage. It was also a popular riding school, with stables and several horses. I loved the smell of the tack room, the leather saddles, bridles, and the whole sensory experience of the animals. Johnny and I would help one of the local farm girls lather and clean the tack, and feed the horses and bring them in from the fields at night. I saw the smithy work on the horses’ hooves. And, of course, I learned to ride.
When I went out with Pop Gardener, I was perfectly fine. But every time I went out with Phil, I was so nervous about his bluster and his cussing that I always managed to fall off. Somehow, as soon as we began to trot I would feel myself slipping, tilting sideways. I would put my hand on the horse beside me—usually Phil’s—to steady myself, but the horse would naturally move aside as it felt the pressure and I would topple between the two. Phil was always exasperated.
“Christ, Julia, get back up!”
Occasionally my gray pony, Trixie, would jerk her head down to eat grass and I would slide right down her neck and suddenly be looking up her nostrils. I remember feeling very silly much of the time…sensitive, scared, foolish. I was a complete wimp.
The loose hay in the barn was always piled very high, and Johnny and I used to climb the stacked bales and jump into the soft mound below. It was a delicious game, safe and free, and we screamed and laughed, having fun together for the first time in ages. Phil bawled us out for damaging the horses’ feed, and that pleasure was curtailed.
Phil and Aunt Joan were certainly having fun. They were immediately attracted to each other, and often sparred playfully. One time Phil picked Auntie up, she screaming and protesting with delight, and dumped her in the water trough. I was dreadfully upset.
“You leave my auntie alone!” I yelled, pummeling him with my fists. Years later, Aunt often said that Phil was the love of her life, and she should have married him.
Even though we were protected from the worst of the Blitz and the ravages of the war in London, there were still occasional air raids in Farnham, and when the sirens sounded we would go down through a trap door into the basement for safety.
Rationing continued, and even at Wrecclesham Farm, with its chickens and produce, everything was scarce. Butter, milk, cheese, and sweets were in short supply. The equivalent of one T-bone steak had to feed an entire family for a week, and peaches and bananas were extremely rare. To this day, they still feel like a luxury to me.
Once or twice a week, Johnny and I would share a boiled egg for breakfast. I would have the yolk one day and he would have the white. The next day he would have the yolk and I the white. Why no one thought to make a scrambled egg, I don’t know. Fortunately, there was plenty of bread and cereal. The black market sprang up around this time, too, and certain hard-to-get items like real nylon stockings could only be bought at a premium price when funds allowed. Regular stockings were mostly made of lisle, and were rather thick.
At lunchtime, which was the main meal of the day in the farmhouse, everyone gathered in the living room. There was a huge oval dining table in the center, and as we ate, we would listen to the midday news on the radio. If anyone dared make a sound, Pop Gardener would bellow, “QUIET!”
The newscasters had serious names like Alvar Liddell and Bruce Belfrage, and in their serious, well-cadenced voices they read the news with careful precision and crisp diction. We would listen to Churchill speak, hanging onto his every word.
I enjoyed my time at the farm. I was back in the countryside again, and Johnny and I were together. But we didn’t have Dad, and we didn’t have Mum. Once in a while, one of them would come to visit, and I would always beg, “Couldn’t you stay?” But they couldn’t, of course, both being so busy—Dad with the war effort, and Mum and Ted entertaining and helping to keep morale high. Thank God Auntie was there. For a great deal of my life she was a surrogate mother, vivacious and fun, and Johnny and I depended on her completely. Little Johnny once cried, “Oh, Auntie! Don’t take me out without you!,” which became a beloved family phrase.
IN THE SPRING of 1943, there was a momentary lull in the war. I was reunited with my mother and Ted Andrews at Clarendon Street, and Johnny went to live with Daddy once again in Hinchley Wood.
Two things happened at this point. I was enrolled in school, and Ted Andrews decided to give me singing lessons. Aunt departed from Wrecclesham as well, and took a one-room flat in London. She was teaching dance at the Cone-Ripman School, a conservatory for the performing arts, which had academic classes in the morning and all kinds of dance lessons in the afternoon. This was the school I attended. It seemed huge and I felt lost at first; I was only seven years old.
I don’t know why Ted started giving me singing lessons. It was often reported that my voice was “discovered” when singing to the family in the air raid shelters, but that was a publicity gimmick—dreamed up by my stepfather or the press. More probable is that I was horribly underfoot with nothing to do, and he decided to give me lessons to keep me quiet, so to speak. Or perhaps it was an effort on his part to get to know this new stepdaughter who was intimidated by him and who didn’t like him. Whatever the case, it seems that he and my mother were surprised to discover that my singing voice was quite unique. It had phenomenal range and strength, which was unusual at such a young age.
It was decided that I should go visit a throat specialist to ascertain that I was doing no harm to my vocal cords. Our cleaning lady at the time was a smoker, and when my parents were away or out on business, she would ask me to go down to the local stationer at the corner and buy her a fresh packet of Player’s Weights or Woodbines. I’d bargain that I’d only do it if she let me try a cigarette when I returned, which she very foolishly agreed to.
Cigarette in hand, I’d go behind the bathroom door, open the windows so the smell wouldn’t linger, and rather guiltily puff away. I absolutely hated it, but it seemed the thing to do at the time.
When she learned that I was to visit a throat specialist, this silly girl panicked.
“Lord help me!” she cried. “The doctor is going to look into your throat and he’ll see it’s black like a chimney from the cigarettes. He’s going to know you’ve been smoking!”
I was so anxious by the time I went that it was all the poor man could do to pry my mouth open and take a look inside. I gagged and retched from the instruments thrust down my throat. Of course my vocal cords were perfectly healthy…but I never smoked again, thank heavens. In retrospect, it was a godsend—everyone was smoking in those days, including my dad, my mother, and Ted Andrews. The specialist declared that I had an almost adult larynx and that there seemed no harm in continuing my singing lessons.
IT WAS AT Clarendon Street that I began really to love reading. My father had taught me to read when I was very young, and it became my salvation. I would curl up in a chair and read for hours. Oddly, my mother would call me on it, saying, “That’s quite enough for one day!” or “You’re being lazy, wasting your time away!” Perhaps she had a legitimate reason; maybe I needed to help with the washing up, or maybe she was worried about my strabismus or something, but I took it rather badly, resenting her for not allowing me that lovely escape. There was a period of time when I did not read for quite a while. I felt guilty at loving it so much. It wasn’t until later, when a tutor encouraged me to read some of the classics, that I enjoyed it once again.
DURING THE MOMENTARY lull in the war, Mum and Ted decided to move out of London. They bought a house on Cromwell Road, Beckenham, Kent, which became our home for the next five years.
Kent is often known as “the garden of England” because of its orchards and fruit trees, and parts of it are beautiful. However, it is the county in southeast Englan
d that abuts the English Channel, and as such it was right in the middle of the flight path between Germany and London. Any bombs that weren’t dropped on London were dumped on us as the Luftwaffe returned home.
Just before we moved, my parents’ divorce came through, and my mother and Ted married immediately in a civil ceremony on November 25, 1943. In later years, Mum told me that she had hoped to wait a while before remarrying, but Ted Andrews had been insistent—and of course there was Donald.
One day, not long afterward, my mother and I were crossing the high street in Beckenham when she suddenly suggested that we find an appropriate name for me to call Ted. It should not be “Daddy”—because Daddy was my daddy—but something that would signify he was sort of my second daddy. Up to this point I had been calling him “Uncle Ted.” I didn’t like the conversation at all, but my mother proposed that I call him “Pop.” I disliked the name, but she thought it a good idea, and thus Ted became “Pop” from then on.
It was also at this time that my name was officially changed from Julia Elizabeth Wells to Julie Andrews. I presume that Mum and Pop wished to spare me the outside feeling of being a stepchild. They felt that “Julia Andrews” did not flow well, so I became a Julie. I didn’t have any say in the matter, and I don’t think my father did either. He must have been hurt.
Our new house was a modest step up for the family. There was a front room, a kitchen, a dining room, and a parlor at the back with a small, enclosed loggia, which led into the garden. We’d had a piano—an upright spinet—in our flat at Clarendon Street, but in Beckenham Mum splurged on a baby grand, which was housed in the parlor. At the beginning I shared a bedroom with Donald, which was not a success since I got little sleep, and eventually I was given my own tiny room at the end of the corridor.
The small back garden had a square pond in the center of it, which was home to a few rather sickly goldfish that soon expired. Also in the garden was an Anderson air raid shelter, set beneath a grass mound. There were concrete steps at the side leading to the shelter below. It had two bunks, a stool, an oil lamp, and a few other bits and pieces in case we had to stay down there for any length of time. Whether it would have been any real protection in the face of a direct hit, I don’t know, but Andersons were much to be desired in those days, and it was probably one of the selling points of the house.
Once we had settled in Beckenham, I was given a puppy—an adorable English cocker spaniel. It was golden and velvety soft, with sweet breath and pluggy feet. Sadly, this lovely creature contracted a disease that led to Saint Vitus’ dance, and for some reason, my stepfather insisted that I go with him to the vet to have the puppy put down. I remember sitting in the car with it jumping and twitching in my lap while I lovingly tried to soothe it. I stayed in the vehicle while Pop took the little bundle inside. I was so sad, I could hardly bear it.
My stepfather actually did several things in an attempt to reach out to me. He built a tiny playhouse in the garden for me, really a shed, with a sloping roof. He added small leaded windows with colored panes. Everything inside was in miniature: little chairs, little desk, little everything.
I was grateful for the gesture, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the gift. My mother supplied me with tiny cups and saucers to play “house” with, and I occasionally went out there, but it didn’t quite work somehow. I didn’t have any social life with children my own age, so no friends came to play. I was just out in the garden by myself, feeling a bit damp and cold.
In retrospect, everything was sad around that time. I was aware that Mum was feeling pressured and seemed more than a little out of sorts. What with a new baby, dealing with the divorce, being newly married to Pop and mediating between us, organizing a new house, and her classical talents being largely wasted—it’s no wonder she was depressed.
SIX
THE WAR ESCALATED yet again. Barrage balloons, defending against low-flying aircraft, dotted the London horizon. Searchlights crisscrossed the night skies. Amazingly, in spite of the danger, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth stayed on at Buckingham Palace, to support the British public. Though they could easily have chosen to hide away in the country, they never did—and it was one of the things that made them so beloved by the English people. They visited bomb sites, they visited hospitals—they were a constant, comforting presence.
By the summer of 1944, the Germans were sending pilotless aircraft—literally flying bombs—known as “doodlebugs” to England. We would hear the pulsating drone of their approach, then there would be a sudden silence as the engine cut out, followed by an unforgettable whistling sound as the missile hurtled toward the earth. If the aircraft cut out directly overhead, one was reasonably sure of being safe, since the doodlebugs had a habit of veering at the last second. If they cut out some distance away, the danger was considerable.
I remember the nights especially. When the air raid sirens blared, we would either go into the big cupboard under the staircase or out to the shelter for safety. Mum would try to keep me in bed for as long as possible, saying, “No need to come down yet—I’ll tell you when!”
After a pause, I’d yell, “Mum! I think I hear the planes coming…”
“Yes, I’ll call when it’s time!”
Eventually we always went out to the shelter, because the raids were so relentless. Near the end of the war, no housewife could finish her laundry, bake a cake, or make a meal without interruption, as the raids occurred day and night. The sirens would wail continuously, and the entire family would run for the shelter and stay there until the all-clear sounded. (To this day, when I hear the local fire station’s noon siren, I am reminded of that all-clear sound.)
My mother devised a time-saving idea. I was able to tell the difference between one of our own fighter aircraft and a German doodlebug. The minute the air raid siren went off, I was dispatched to sit on top of our shelter with a beach stool, an umbrella, a tiny pair of opera glasses, and a whistle. The opera glasses were absolutely useless, but I relied on my sense of sound, and the minute I heard the inevitable approach of a doodlebug, I’d blow my whistle. Mum, therefore, had a little more time to do what she had to do. She’d come running at the last possible minute and we’d all pile into the shelter. The bomb would drop, the all-clear would ring out, and we’d start all over again.
The trouble was that all the neighbors began to rely on my whistle, as well. The day came when it was simply teeming with rain and, despite the umbrella, I rebelled. A bomb dropped close by, and later there were quite a few people pounding at our door.
“Why didn’t she blow her bloody whistle?” the neighbors demanded.
From then on I had to do it.
One day, we were sitting in the shelter when my stepfather clattered down the steps.
“Come and look at this!” he said, and we went outside to witness a huge dogfight, taking place directly above us. It was scary to see it all going on right over our heads.
Sometimes we were in the air raid shelter all night. We would chat quietly, or listen for the airplanes, huddling down there, feeling claustrophobic and wondering if this was the day we were going to be hit. We’d hear the crunch of the bombs, and were truly blessed in that they only dropped in a circle around us.
ON JUNE 3, 1944, Dad and Win got married. For their honeymoon, they went to Brixham on the south Devon coast for a week, with Johnny in tow. They had a single room with a double bed, and Johnny had to sleep with them. Win very nearly quit the marriage that first week for, according to her, Johnny was a “little bugger” and nothing was right. Somehow, they pulled through it. They used a small legacy that Win’s father had left her to buy a house in Chessington, Surrey.
I had met Win only once, when she was working at the Esher Filling Station. On my early visits to Chessington, I was resentful of the new woman in my dad’s life, but she tried very hard to make my time there special. She was also a marvelous cook.
While Win stayed home to prepare her meals, Dad would take us on expedition
s. Johnny, then six, would ride on the back of Dad’s bike and I would ride my own. We’d go to the zoo, or we would cycle a fair distance to Surbiton Lagoon—a big, open-air swimming pool that was always perishingly cold. I wasn’t used to the outdoor life, and I often felt weak and sickly. Life with Dad and Win and Johnny could seem a bit too robust.
At Surbiton Lagoon, Dad taught me to swim. He was endlessly patient, but every time he let go of me, I’d go under the surface, gasping and taking in great gulps of chlorinated water. Johnny of course swam easily and well. At the end of each lesson Dad would leave Johnny and me in the shallow end while he went off to enjoy his own moment in the pool. He would climb to the topmost diving board in the deep end.
“There goes Dad!” we’d say, waving and feeling so proud as he executed marvelous swan dives, pikes, and jackknives. Dad would then come and fetch us, give us a rough, brisk towel-down—by now we were all goose bumps and blue—and then he’d buy each of us a hot chocolate and a doughnut at the Lagoon Café.
It was a somewhat painful experience: struggling to learn to swim, with the water so cold, being chilled to the marrow. But by the end of the morning, it felt so good to have done it and to have the treat afterward. In spite of the long ride home, it was always worth the effort—quality time with Dad.
I was promised a £5 note the day I learned to swim. In those days, a “fiver” was a large piece of white paper, thin like tissue, engraved with fine, beautiful calligraphy and with a tiny black thread of steel running through it, only visible when held up to the light. I remember the day when my feet finally came up off the bottom of the pool and there I was, swimming alone! Dad was thrilled. I was thrilled. We went home to tell Win the good news and we had a celebration lunch. I was duly given my fiver—it felt like a lot of money—and a great fuss was made over me. From then on, swimming was great.
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