My War Part II - Growing Up

I started work in June or July 1940 at Freeman’s, the mail order company (still there at 137 Clapham Rd, London SW9 0HP) at 10 shillings per week, doing the lowliest of clerical jobs — making entries on printed forms and sending them off to people who were in arrears or some such. It bored me to tears so, in a very short time and despite promotion and a wage increase I was prepared to leave. Before I left, however, there was a major incident when in one of the early daylight air raids a bomb fell, penetrating the forecourt of the building. The staff were all in the basement area where the mail order goods were stored and where everyone had to go as soon as the sirens were heard. We knew of course that there had been a direct hit as we not only felt it but the place was immediately plunged into darkness and an acrid smell developed. Only when we were eventually led out by torches into the open air could we see the crater and the number of injured being treated. There were quite a few people badly maimed and some fatalities I think but I can’t remember the details. A short time after this tragic incident we assembled again in the repaired forecourt when we were visited by the then Duke of Kent who was there to say appropriate words on behalf of the King.

Those of us who had been in the unaffected areas were told to go home — this was the middle of the afternoon — and luckily when I got off the bus my mother was at the stop, waiting for the bus to take her to East Dulwich Hospital where she was working (and continued to work throughout the war). She would have been in quite a flap otherwise for the way news travelled then, she would have been bound to hear about it some time during her shift. The only vivid incident I remember her recounting of her time at the hospital was of her sadness at the sight of an injured German airman who had baled out when his plane came down (I don’t know exactly where). Typically she had no sense of his being an enemy — just a very young man in terrible circumstances with a mother not so very different to herself. He was well cared for and didn’t stay in the hospital for very long — presumably the military took over and he would have gone to a P.O.W. camp once he had recovered.

At the start of 1940, in very cold weather, we moved into a flat in part of the newly built council estate on Tulse Hill. The builders were still at work finishing off the existing buildings but, once those blocks were completed, work on the remaining development stopped. As a result, for the next 12 years it was a very pleasant environment with one entrance to Brockwell Park immediately opposite our block giving us an uncluttered view of the park and open ground on the down slope of the hill. Snow-covered it was quite pretty and, left untouched, wild flowers sprouted and the air was good; not so much fun to go up with the weekend shopping though! But, oh the joy of having hot water on tap, a bathroom and electricity — except that we had no gas or electricity on the day we moved in! We had been originally allocated a top floor flat but it was found at the last minute that the roof was leaking, so they moved us down to the flat below where of course the connections had not been made. Used to improvising, my mother put candles in strategic places, got a good fire burning and fried our food over that. It is interesting to me to reflect on the efficiency of the gas and electricity services at that time, for everything was sorted out the following day.

At this time there was a barrage balloon located in the park and at some point a good friend of mine, too pretty for her own good, gave new meaning to “aid and comfort for the armed forces”, by providing a service not envisaged by the authorities when she made frequent evening visits to the two airmen manning the site (WAAF girls had not been assigned to these sites at that time). Not tempted myself, to this day I can’t remember whether my shock outweighed my admiration for such recklessness. It was however the beginning of a learning curve about sex - she was quite simply promiscuous from an early age, spreading her favours freely in both senses. Eventually she married a thoroughly decent American GI and, with no desire ever to return to England, sent me just one letter to tell me she had named her first child after me.

One ground floor corner flat in each block was adapted as a shelter — all windows bricked in and reinforcing, heavy wooden supports put in place in all the rooms. When London was being bombed nightly (I rely on Churchill’s Second World War, Vol. II p.302 that this lasted for 57 consecutive nights from September 7) we used to go down there, fully dressed, as soon as the sirens sounded. It was always early evening and we soon established our own places for sleeping on the mattresses provided, having taken with us a few portable comforts, e.g. drinks, snacks, books, knitting, etc. to fill in the few hours before the lights were dimmed. I say “we” but my mother never slept there. She was always a bit claustrophobic and, in any case, she was often on late or night duty at the hospital and argued that if her number was going to be up, it could just as easily happen on the bus or wherever. Quite often (when there was enough fat) she would bring down freshly fried chips for us and our immediate neighbours. (Vegetables and fruit were never rationed.) Only one bomb fell on the estate, going through four floors of a block fairly near to ours. When I woke the following morning, they told me our block had been badly shaken but I slept through it all as I did through all the various periods of bombing. There were no casualties — the few people in a ground floor flat of the affected building who had chosen not to sleep in the shelter were helped out, dusty and shocked but otherwise unharmed.

Once things had largely stopped falling from the air, life went on happily in the main. In 1942 I joined a Youth Club which was set up on three floors of a former second-hand shop on the corner of Tulse Hill and Water Lane and was open every evening, including Sundays. We danced to gramophone records on the ground floor and quite a few of us took part in the other organised activities on the upper floors. I joined the drama group and a very dedicated young woman brought us to the point where we were able to stage a play, “A Murder has been Arranged”, by Emlyn Williams. This was staged in a hall attached to the synagogue in Effra Road and we had quite good audiences for the few nights it was on. I was Lady Jasper, the leading lady, and my transport to the “theatre” was the crossbar of the bike belonging to one of the cast! We had quite a good notice in the local paper but seemingly no one has kept that cutting. It was also during ’41 and ’42 that I used to go regularly to stay with my best friend, Rita, at her parents’ house in Wembley at weekends. She had a wide circle of friends and I have fond memories of dancing on Sunday evenings in the church hall of St. Joseph’s (Holy Joe’s in our vernacular) followed by some quite harmless “necking”. No one could have predicted at that time just how far necking would develop in the next five to ten years! Whether it would have done so at such speed had there not been the war, who can tell?

During those years I worked at Chappell’s the music company in New Bond Street: I can’t remember what the pay was, probably about £2 weekly, but we had handsome Christmas bonuses — one of mine being £11, the largest sum I had ever handled and the first £5 notes I had ever seen, beautifully large and white. I had to get one of my local shops to change them for me, as no one I knew had a bank account. I was the junior No.4 on the switchboard, then aged 15, and I had something like a schoolgirl crush on Hylda Higgins who was 35 and it was she who indirectly got me smoking.

Because I admired everything about her, I inevitably tried to copy her in whatever way I could and smoking Craven A’s was the result! Three a day - one on the bus going to work, one in Lyons teashop with my coffee at lunch time and one on the bus going home. A great oak grew from that particular acorn and I am still trying to stop! I have kept just one letter from her dated 17th October 1943 telling me of her husband’s death in a Japanese POW camp. Sadly, we lost touch after the war when she went to Germany with the American Red Cross.

I enjoyed my time there — sheet music for the piano at discount, a good friend in the box office who provided many free tickets for plays and opera at The Stoll Theatre and I loved the buzz of the West End. And, of course, seeing the odd celebrity on foot — not always in good circumstances. I actually worked in what had been a normal terraced house in Maddox Street but which formed part of Chappell’s set up and, although we used its front door in the ordinary way to come and go, it was linked at the back with the main Chappell’s building in New Bond Street. Quite a few of the adjoining houses were occupied by some high-class French prostitutes (always beautifully dressed and groomed) who stood at their gates from about 4 pm, chatting to each other and waiting for clients to arrive. On the day I saw a particular famous British film actor approaching one I was sufficiently surprised to tell my mother about it, to which her response was a classic “generation gap” one. How did I know what prostitutes looked like? She was quite unaware that there were “professional” degrees and that not all of them lurked in doorways in Soho, with skirts up to their knees!

Some time in 1943, I left Chappell’s to work for General Films Distributors as a telephonist (three weeks in Wardour Street, learning the ropes, and then to a grand country house, “Swinley Hurst”, outside Ascot which they had rented for the duration). Comfortably housed and fed, with plenty of entertainment in the evenings and enjoying each weekend at home, it was a fairly happy, carefree time. The only small drawback was getting up early each Monday morning to get back to work on time!

One memorable little story of my time there concerns bananas which we had not seen since supplies had run out soon after the war started: a woman in the nearby village had been given a large hand of them by her sailor son. She sliced many of them and put a few pieces on the tops of small pots of jelly and sent them to us. I don’t know if everyone in our house had one but for a large number of us it was a rare treat. Someone must have conveyed our appreciation but sadly I was never able to meet her because I have always thought it was a grand gesture.

I was there when news of the first V1 exploding in London was headlined in the papers and was at that point described as a pilotless plane. It caused a great deal of discussion but I can’t remember much fear being expressed, so much so that when shortly after I had a good view of one, I was intrigued rather than frightened. Attracted by the sound of the engine, I was standing with a friend on the balcony outside our flat when it flew horizontally and at relatively low speed not so very high above our eye-line and was close enough for us to take in its shape and dimensions.
To us, it looked like a large model aeroplane, an impression soon dispelled when the fiery engine cut out and the tremendous sound of its explosion followed. It was the only time I saw one in flight as, living so far from the heart of London, not so many fell in our area.

My only other personal memory of them was of the sound of one falling very close. The siren had sounded and Beryl, now aged nine, and I were the only ones in the flat. The layout of the flat allowed for all the doors to be closed, leaving a square area which afforded a fair degree of protection from flying glass in the event of windows being blown out. We could hear the V1 approaching and I think the need to comfort my sister who was crouched in a corner, frightened and tearful, made me forget to some extent my own fear. However, as we heard the engine cut out and heard the clattering sound as the bomb fell, we both felt sure it was going to land on our building. It was our good luck that it did not and that was the general feeling about those dreadful weapons - all that you prayed for was that the engine would not cut out over your head because they just used to plummet down. Awful as it may sound you were in fact hoping for them to fall somewhere else and, God willing, on some vacant land or other open space. It was just a matter of luck.

As for the later, faster and more powerful V2 rockets which flew so fast they gave no warning, I have no personal memory of them apart from seeing the enormous crater made by one near Lambeth Bridge.

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