by Beezy Marsh
They were a joyous mass of humanity, endlessly singing, dancing, kissing. All the agonies of the war were swept away as pianos were hauled out of smoky bar rooms and into the streets, so that everyone could join in the knees-up. They belted out ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and when they did the ‘Lambeth Walk’, lumbago was forgotten for the night. People smiled and laughed more than Annie could ever remember.
Harry, her Harry, was there with Annie through it all until they’d sung themselves hoarse and their feet were blistered from dancing.
As dawn was breaking, they made their way home through the streets they knew so well, past the places that had been reduced to rubble by the terror from above which had made the nights of London a living hell for so long.
Dunkirk and the Blitz and everything they had suffered had united the community more than Hitler could ever have foreseen. Their homes lay in ruins, but their faith had not been shaken.
Stopping for a moment outside their front door, Harry pulled her into his arms and they kissed. She knew then that whatever the future held, they could face it together.
They had gone out during war time but they came home at first light, to peace at last.
27
Ethel
Clapham, May 1945
‘Go on, Zena! Give us a twirl!’
Ethel beamed with pride as her beautiful, raven-haired daughter led the dancing in the street, to the cheers of their neighbours at their VE Day party.
She was the brightest, the prettiest of all the girls and what’s more, she was kind too; she’d sung her way through many an air raid in the tube stations during the blackout, to keep everyone’s spirits up. Even when she was almost dead on her feet from dancing, she still found time to entertain the folks who’d been bombed out down at the rest centres.
No one knew where she’d got it from, but Zena seemed to have the most extraordinary talent for making people smile. When she walked into the room, it was like the sun coming out. Ethel and Len doted on their daughter, and now this dreadful war was over, they were even thinking of setting up a dance school for her, so she could achieve her dream of being a teacher. She was fifteen now and lovelier with every passing day.
Len’s dairy business and shop in Clapham Manor Street was doing well and he treated Ethel like a queen. Zena was his princess and William, well, he was growing up to be a young man, who was nearly twenty now. He looked the spitting image of his father and he was prone to his moods, too, which Ethel despised. Len knew how to handle him, though. He’d get him working away in the shop or, better still, pushing the handcart full of milk around the streets on his daily rounds. Len always had a spring in his step when he went off every morning and Ethel loved him dearly.
Ethel felt a little tug at her sleeve and gazed down to see one of the snotty-nosed local tearaways looking up at her.
‘Can I have some of that jelly, Mrs Ebdon?’ he said, pointing to the bowl on the table.
‘Of course you can,’ she said, serving him a big helping. She’d put by a whole stash of tinned fruit and jelly when the war broke out and it was wonderful to be able to share that with the children, to make the day one to remember.
Everyone called her Mrs Ebdon as a mark of respect because she helped run the shop; she was a pillar of the community. It almost made the long hours standing on the freezing floor of the dairy worth it, although she hated having to turn the greying sausages over to the pink side to make them look a bit more appealing so they’d sell.
Her life now in London was everything she could have wished for. Well, except for one fly in the ointment. Sometimes she’d lie awake in bed at night and worry about what would happen if Harry ever came back. That dreadful afternoon when Zena was a baby and he’d caught her with Len still haunted her. In fact, she carefully locked the front door and checked all the windows every night, just in case. She didn’t want him barging his way back into their lives. He could be dead for all she knew – not that she cared. There was always that sister of his in Newcastle who she could ask, but Ethel wasn’t going to chase her; they’d never got on in any case. It was best to let sleeping dogs lie, that’s what Len said.
As far as the local community was concerned, nobody spoke about where Harry had gone or why she was living with Len. She’d just put the word out to Doreen that he’d walked out on the family and it was good riddance to bad rubbish, and neighbourhood gossip did the rest. Da took her side about Harry and he seemed to approve when she took up with Len, who worshipped the ground that Ethel walked on. It had been tough for a while when she and Len had first moved in together, because Da knew that she was still married to Harry, but he was so captivated by his beautiful granddaughter, Zena, that he was prepared to overlook that. And Len was charming to Da, who now lived in a flat around the corner, and was always welcome in their home.
With every passing year, it got easier to think less about Harry – except for the fact that William was so like him, not just in looks, but in his bookish ways and his interest in politics. That rankled with Ethel, but she allowed him to go off to the library on his bicycle or spend hours alone in his room, just to keep him out of her way, which she preferred.
Sometimes, when she was down the pub, she found herself spinning yarns about how she’d run away from Newcastle when she was just eighteen to start a new life in London. Perhaps it was wrong to do that but she couldn’t help it; it was just easier to gloss over the truth, that’s all. Meeting Harry had been her stepping stone to being here, with Len, where she was meant to be and it was better if he didn’t feature in her life story, which sounded more glamorous and entertaining when she told it the way she did.
Len had bought her a beautiful wedding band which she wore with pride, but they weren’t married, not that she’d ever let on, not even to the children. Len wanted to marry her, of course, but they couldn’t walk up the aisle together because she was still married to Harry.
They couldn’t afford a divorce and if they’d tried to trace Harry and he refused, it would have spoiled everything they’d worked for. She did not want that lunatic back in their lives. Len was well respected and she was the queen of the street – the woman everyone looked up to – and that was before she got onto all the attention she got because of being Zena’s mother. The child had star quality, like an actress from the films she still adored watching at the cinema most weekends. Yes, Ethel was living the life she’d hoped for and now this blasted war was over, they could all start to enjoy themselves a bit more, even if there was no end to rationing in sight.
Living on rations didn’t bother her – she was thin as a pin anyway because her clothes fitted her better that way and Len liked it. But she wanted to take some days off from the shop, to go to the seaside or up West, to the theatres, to wear the lovely mink stole Len had bought her before the war and really let her hair down a bit.
She spotted William at the end of the trestle tables, pouring himself another drink from a bottle of sherry. He was already glassy-eyed.
‘I think you’ve had enough,’ she said, going over to his side.
‘It’s a party, Mum!’ he said, rocking back on his heels and laughing. ‘Don’t be such a spoilsport!’
He was a big lad now, taller than Len, and handsome with it but he had a determined streak and a liking for the drink, which worried her. And when his grey eyes settled on her, it was like going back twenty years, to the Hoppings fair in Newcastle, where she first met Harry.
William had cried for his dad so much that first year after he left but when Ethel put her foot down and said that was that, the tears had stopped and the moods had started. She’d slapped him once, when he was unforgivably rude to her. But Len had handled it all in the end, explaining that his dad had problems and didn’t want to be with the family in London for his own reasons. That seemed to do the trick and William accepted Len as his stepdad because he was such a kind, caring man. Zena didn’t know anything about Harry, of course, other than what she might have overheard in whispered co
nversations – that he had deserted the family before she was born. William knew better than to raise his name within earshot of Ethel or she’d give him what for. Just a glance from her was enough to let him know he was sailing close to the wind.
The truth about what had happened with Zena was a secret she kept, uneasily, but out of necessity, for all their sakes. As she watched William pouring himself another drink, she had a fleeting sense of unease about whether she’d been too hard on him when he was growing up.
But then Zena skipped over and hugged her and the fella from the pub brought out his accordion, to the delight of the kiddies, who started waving their Union Jacks in time to his version of ‘Rule Britannia’, amid shouts of ‘We won the war!’ In that moment, the past was forgotten.
Ethel only wanted to look to the future now, a future that was as bright and sunny and vivacious as her beautiful daughter. She wasn’t anything like her father, Len, in looks, but then, daughters didn’t always take after their dads, did they?
28
Annie
Acton, January 1946
Some tatty bunting left over from the VJ Day celebrations was still tied to the top of a lamp post on Grove Road. It had hung resolutely through the winds and the rain of a London winter as a little reminder of the happiest day when the war finally ended.
There had been another big street party after atomic bombs were dropped by the United States and Japan surrendered soon after, but when pictures of skeletal-looking soldiers who’d been held prisoners of war in Japanese prison camps began to emerge, alongside stories of their horrendous suffering, the appetite for celebration had been muted.
The bunting fluttered in the wind, as Annie and the children made their way up to the grocer’s shop to see if the bananas had finally arrived. A big ship had docked a week or so ago down at Avonmouth and children were going to be allowed to have the first ones. They were chattering amongst themselves about what this strange new yellow fruit would taste like as they rounded the corner and saw a big queue forming outside the shop.
‘I’m going to share it out between us,’ said Anita, puffing her chest out a bit. She was the eldest and there was no way she was going to let her little brother and sister snaffle it.
‘But I want it!’ cried Patricia, toddling along. ‘It’s my banana!’
‘You won’t get anything if you carry on like that,’ Annie chided. ‘We all have to queue and wait our turn and share things fairly, you’ll see.’
In some ways, life after the war hadn’t changed that much. People accepted long queues for food as just one of those things. Annie didn’t mind because it was a nice way to catch up with neighbours and pass the time of day.
There was still rationing for milk, tea, sugar, meat, butter, lard, cheese and sweets and some said that flour shortages meant that bread was likely to be put on the ration soon – which seemed daft to Annie, now the war was done, but folk like her were not to question these things. It was up to the powers that be.
Her friend Esther was standing at the end of the queue, with her shopping basket, looking a bit forlorn. She seemed rather rudderless now the war had ended and with her kids in school, the days were long. There was still a lot of voluntary work to be done, with so many people having lost their homes or their loved ones, but the sense of urgency that had provided the focus for her work had departed. What’s more, things were a bit difficult for her indoors because the children had got so used to living without a father that they found it hard to adjust to having their dad, Paul, back at home from the Royal Air Force.
‘How’s everything?’ said Annie, giving her a little hug.
Esther had dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t been sleeping.
‘It’s not easy,’ she said. ‘Paul’s gone back to his mother’s for a while. I think it’s for the best.’
Annie lowered her voice, so that the woman in front of them in the queue wouldn’t hear.
‘But what happened?’
‘He’s just so moody and regimented, he’s treating the house like his barracks and he wants to impose so many silly rules on me and the kids,’ she said. ‘I can’t live like that, Annie. I’d rather be alone.’
‘You don’t mean that, do you?’
‘He just seems to snap over the silliest of things,’ she went on, staring into space as the queue inched slowly forwards. ‘He’d shaved his moustache off when he was demobbed and because I didn’t notice, he treated that as a betrayal. It was as if I had slept with another man. He didn’t speak to me or the children for a week and then when he did, he started barking orders at us.’
Annie thought for a moment of all the things Harry had told her about how men suffered mental scars from being in the war.
‘He’s probably seen some terrible things, lost friends in those fighter planes in all those battles,’ she said. ‘It can take time for men to readjust to life at home, that’s all. Give it a chance, Esther.’
But Esther shook her head sadly. ‘I’ve seen things too, in the rest centres. Mothers who have lost children, wives who have lost husbands. People suffered and made sacrifices on the home front too for so long. I can’t go back to having him rule the roost. Nothing can ever go back to the way it used to be before the war. I don’t want him telling me what to do any more.’
Annie bit her lip to stop her saying anything to upset her friend further. Esther had the right to make her own choices.
Just then, she spotted Bessie hobbling along Churchfield Road with her book of coupons in her hand to join them at the grocer’s. ‘Why don’t you let me get your shopping for you and you can go down to my mum’s and take the weight off your feet?’ said Annie to the old woman.
Poor Bessie, she’d spent her entire life standing on freezing-cold stone laundry floors and now she struggled with the daily pain of having worked in such harsh conditions. On bad days, her walk was a hobble and her legs looked like a pair of tree trunks under her wrinkled stockings.
She nodded gratefully and was just shuffling off when a wild-eyed young bloke, who couldn’t have been more than twenty or so, almost knocked her flying.
He was wearing an army greatcoat which he clutched to his thin frame and he jabbered away to himself before grabbing a great handful of apples and trying to make off with them. He was so scrawny, his eyes seemed to be eating up his face.
‘Oi!’ cried one of the other women in the queue. ‘Put those back, you bleeding tea leaf!’
The grocer ran out to see what the fuss was about, and he collared the thief. As luck would have it, a copper came strolling past but when the man caught sight of his uniform, he did the strangest thing. He fell to the floor, weeping, and curled himself into a ball with his hands over his head and started whimpering, ‘No! Please, no!’
‘He was in the camps in Burma,’ someone whispered. ‘It ain’t his fault.’
The copper took off his helmet and kneeled down beside him before offering him his hand. ‘It’s all right son, there’s no enemies here. Come on, we’ll get you home.’
The grocer prised the apples from the fella’s grasp and stuffed them into a brown paper bag, before quickly handing them back to him. ‘These are on the house. Just come and ask me if you want anything and you’ll have it, no charge, see? We’re your friends here.’
‘Why is that funny man lying on the ground?’ said Anita.
‘Don’t stare, it’s not his fault,’ said Annie. ‘He’s scared because a nasty person did something terrible to him during the war, that’s all. But we are not like that here. This whole town is his home and we must all look after him.’
George returned from the war to a hero’s welcome.
He was tanned but so much thinner and his khaki uniform hung off him in a way that had Mum piling extra dumplings onto her boy’s dinner plate, much to Bill’s annoyance.
The children clambered all over him like excited puppies and he was such a good uncle, he was barely back in his civvies before he was busy building a wooden fort
for John and a doll’s house and a cot for Anita and Patricia.
The next plan, true to his word, was to buy some chickens and keep them in the Anderson shelter, which he lined with hay. Tending those birds provided hours of entertainment for the little ones, as well as free eggs, which were still on the ration. Mum was pleased as Punch with that turn of events.
‘I knew you’d make it home safely,’ said Annie, as they stood in the back garden watching Bill showing John how to feed the new family pets.
George turned to say something but was caught out by yet another coughing fit.
‘Have you seen a doctor about that cough, George?’ she said.
‘There’s no need, really,’ he replied with a wave of his hand. But Annie wouldn’t be dissuaded. Her brother had been seriously ill as a little boy, with TB, which was rife in the laundries of Soapsud Island, where the family had worked for so long. He’d suffered damage to one lung because of it.
‘George, please,’ she began. ‘You know you need to look after your chest . . .’
His voice fell to a whisper. ‘I don’t want to worry Mum but yes, it’s TB. I saw a lot of doctors in the army when I was over in Italy and France and the fresh air there seemed to help but there’s nothing to be done about it. I just have to keep myself well, that’s all.’
Annie nodded. She’d seen so many women with the condition in the laundries; thin, white as the sheets they were scrubbing at the washboards. People lived with it because there was no treatment, only long stays in sanatoriums and operations too gruesome to talk about, which some said left you worse off than if you’d just let the disease take its course.
‘We’re all going to die sometime, Annie,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I’m home now here, with you all, and I want to live each day to the full.’
He was true to his word and within a few weeks of coming home, George had got himself a job as a carpenter and was walking out with a girl from Ealing, who he’d met at the varieties in Chiswick.
